General Discussions

**fastreplies** · 11-01-2007, 04:35 PM

Are we on our way to the new computer wide screen monitor format?

What will happen to old optimized for … screen resolution sites?

fastreplies

P.S. 500 post

**CSS4Life** · 11-01-2007, 04:48 PM

Well we are certainly moving that way. I tend to still make sure my site works in an 800 x 600 environment but about half of all users now use a 1024 x 768 screen and a lot use much higher than this. My macbook running on 1280 x 800 at the moment which is fairly widescreen really at the moment - if my sites look OK on this then I presume they look on on other larger resolutions too.

As for the old sites, they'll either move on or they'll just get left behind. That's what happens these days.

P.S. congrats on your 500th post

**joder** · 11-01-2007, 04:55 PM

I think wide screen monitors are going to be the norm. The flat panels I see are now wide screen as well as the laptops. My laptop is 1920x1200.

**Learning Newbie** · 11-01-2007, 04:57 PM

High resolution wide screen displays are the present, not the future. Itty bitty little square ones are the past. It's not just quality, size, eye comfort, it's also weight and the amount of space those old picture tubes took up. Plus you can turn your LCD sideways when you're working something narrow but tall.

**CSS4Life** · 11-01-2007, 05:00 PM

All of this is giving making me rethink my next web site design project (to be unveiled sometime in the future - intelligent people might be able to guess what the site will be about). It's currently designed to be a fixed 800px theme, but I might consider making that 900px or 1000px at this rate.

**Learning Newbie** · 11-01-2007, 05:02 PM

I friggen hate fixed width themes! Just don't use some scripting to try and resize the browser!

**fastreplies** · 11-01-2007, 05:10 PM

The reason I am asking, I plugged my PC into 32inches HD TV Monitor that
has ~1300x780 resolution and now everything got stretched to that resolution.

I created page with new parameters and its looks normal now, I mean
pictures, browser window and the rest.

fastreplies

**CSS4Life** · 11-01-2007, 05:18 PM

Newbie I'm not talking about a fixed widthed browser size - I'm talking about the actual theme itself. I've specified the content area size as 800px, as opposed to a width of 80% or whatever which would mean that if you resized the browser, the text would flow around.

If you are hating the fixed width themes that I'm talking about, then you must be hating about half the internet!

**Learning Newbie** · 11-01-2007, 05:32 PM

A lot of sites that force a set content area (like 800px) will use script to resize your browser so it matches the size the designer liked. When that happens, I wish I could shoot the designer, or short of that crash their server. People who do that should be flogged on TV. Fixed with designs that don't do that, I guess are merely annoying instead of evil. Those people don't really deserve death.

But notice how nice WT looks at whatever screen res you feel like devoting to it?

I swear 99 % of people don't run their browser full screen. And before anyone goes correcting me on the math, remember what Mark Twain said "There are 3 kinds of lies: lies, dam lies, and statistics."

To Fast Replies - there are a lot of different ways computers handle the screen shape and size issue. One is virtualization, where you have to scroll around to get at your content. Another is to just work with what they have. If the screen is bigger than the content it leaves black stripes all around. Yet another is to stretch the data to fit. Sounds like that's what's going on with your TV?

**CSS4Life** · 11-01-2007, 05:34 PM

If you hate fixed width designs, then I guess my hosting site, the template site and all of the templates on it go down the drain!

**angele803** · 11-01-2007, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joder

I think wide screen monitors are going to be the norm. The flat panels I see are now wide screen as well as the laptops. My laptop is 1920x1200.

Holy cow, how big is your laptop?

**joder** · 05:38 PM

People who make them 800 or less pixels wide, just look scrunched up to me.

Really, I don't see very many sites where a fixed-width layout looks the best, especially when they try to shove 2 or 3 columns in that itty-bitty space.

EDIT:

Whym, your hosting site looks good on my screen

**joder** · 11-01-2007, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angele803

Holy cow, how big is your laptop?

http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...+Latitude+D820

**CSS4Life** · 11-01-2007, 05:43 PM

I think following on from this discussion, I'll be designing my sites so that the content area is at least 900 pixels wide or probably just under 1000 pixels (like my hosting site if I remember correctly). It'll look great on 1024 x 768 and still reasonable on larger resolutions. I'll bear in mind that about 10% of the population are still using 800 x 600 resolutions though - that's the statistics I remember anyway

**Learning Newbie** · 11-01-2007, 05:53 PM

I'm not sure if that's the best idea, but it's a dang common one. Again, I think lots of people don't fill the screen with the browser. I know a few geeks who run the Windows driver that puts your RAM and IP address and disc volumes and all that on the right edge of the desktop. Most of them have the browser set to take up most of the screen but leave the righ tedge free.

The goal of the wide screen movement, or at least how Dell sold it, is that you can have two pages open at the same time with no scrolling. That's basically the driving force behind multiple monitors, too. I think people with only 1 screen still like multi tasking. Heck, my laptop I use the built in screen but I have the most important stuff around the edge of my desktop so I generally leave FireFox taking up about 75 % of the screen, but in the middle so I can still reach "My Computer" and "Recycle Bin" at any moment.

Screen resolution <> available browser resolution. Also, lots of stuff like favorites and inline search open up on the left edge of the browser itself, so even if it gets the whole screen it can shrink.

I say there's just way too many vairables. That's why I'm such a big fan of the fluid design. There was a thread on this in the design forum where eveyrone said I'm nuts.

**CSS4Life** · 11-01-2007, 05:57 PM

You probably are

! Joke. I guess you're right. I tend to love having my window at maximum width and height - I don't know why, I just love it.

Good point about browser size though - maybe I'll stick with a smaller width after all. I'll probably meet it somewhere in the middle at say 900 pixels, rather than 1000

**Learning Newbie** · 11-01-2007, 06:14 PM

Another question is who do you rather offend? Granny who's got a 1024x768 laptop her kids bought her to check email, she just knows she has a computer. Joder who has a 1900x1200 screen knows this is huge and above average. If it can only look right on one of them, I think Joder will be more forgiving.

**fastreplies** · 08:19 PM

On my 22 inches 1600x1200 regular monitor I can split open 4 browsers for
example at the same time http://www.amray.com/split.html which is good to
monitor 4 forums or browse using 4 browsers.

Each window is about 800x540 and large enough to surf comfortably but new format
IMHO sooner or later will require new design standards and now is the good time
to start thinking about near future

fastreplies

**joder** · 11-01-2007, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

Another question is who do you rather offend? Granny who's got a 1024x768 laptop her kids bought her to check email, she just knows she has a computer. Joder who has a 1900x1200 screen knows this is huge and above average. If it can only look right on one of them, I think Joder will be more forgiving.

I think your right. I will be more forgiving

But Daniel's site does look good on my screen even with Firefox fully maximized.

I tend to use a browser fully maximized. Putty sessions - sometimes I use 4 on the screen at the same time and explorer windows 2 at a time to move files.