Thats exactly the problem we're talking about. Much of computer work flows vertically rather than horizontally. When you view any vertical document be it a pdf, website, word document etc, you always have to scroll, but on a widescreen monitor, you get lots of blank space on the sides.
Have you ever thought, hmm I wish my monitor/laptop was taller then I wouldn't have to scroll as much and I could see more content on the screen at once?
I think this is the only site I visit where I do get white space either side of the content, everywhere else the content fills the screen as it is designed for widesceen.
If I had a 4:3 monitor I'd need to reduce the size by using ctrl/- and would probably make the print too small to see - especially as I normally sit about 5 feet away from the monitor. Or I could use the tilt wheel to scroll sideways, but that is a pain.
With PDFs etc I choose options which fill the screen, sometimes zooming in if the print is too small.
p.s. along with the previous poster I also use NoSquint as an extra option, but you may not like Firefox.
Some of examples of programs and websites viewed at different screen resolutions. Note how they either fill the screen better or show more space vertically when viewed at a 4:3 resolution, but show lots of blank space at the sides when shown at 1920x1080.
Wide-screen monitors are ideal for spreadsheets and data tables.
You can also resize windows and have them side by side for other applications.
Word documents and PDFs can also be shoiwn2 or 3 pages wide.
I agree completely. 4:3 is perfectly fine if you are building simple tables in Excel or Access but if you are a power user with very large databases the more real-estate the better. Continually having to scroll a large database is so tedious. Also, if using Queries or linking said databases together throughout differing MS programs, it is very beneficial to have multiple programs open side-by-side.
Some of examples of programs and websites viewed at different screen resolutions. Note how they either fill the screen better or show more space vertically when viewed at a 4:3 resolution, but show lots of blank space at the sides when shown at 1920x1080.
The problem is website design, which is still living in pre-widescreen days. The increasingly common responsive designs aren't usually responsive to widescreen full HD monitors.
Websites are usually designed as fixed width (around 930-980px) because they've got to fit on smaller screens. Browsers on 1920-1080px screens should be viewed windowed. Webpages can't be widescreen - users will happily scroll up/down, but a wide page on a smaller screen would mean side-to-side scrolling - a big no-no. I've seen webpages that have % layout (eg Wikipedia) ie you can fill the whole screen widthwise in HD, but 60cm wide text is pretty much impossible to read.
I seem to recall that when W8 first landed, the metro IE was full screen only - Google home page filling a 27" HD monitor was a ****ing joke - a big expanse of white with a tiny logo in the middle. Fullscreen on a HD monitor is for movies, Photoshop, After Effects, video editing etc - I use dual 27" 1920-1080px screens for that stuff - my Firefox is windowed.
I agree. It seems a more preferable experience would be not to use the browser Maximised.
Try dragging the Window Right or left, off the screen, so that Windows makes it half-width.
If you haven't tried Firefox with the 'NoSquint' Add-on, please do.
It gives a quick and easy method of adjusting Page and Text Zoom levels
(and remembers them for each site you visit)
This can be cumbersome or even not possible to fully replicate in other browsers
I am not suggesting you should dump your favourite browser(s), but if you check out NoSquint, you can see the options
(click % box at bottom right of page) and its methodology
Then work out best way of doing the same in your usual browser(s)
You'res looks to be zoomed in as the buttons, text etc appear bigger. The problem of zooming in is that alough it makes everything bigger you lose vertical space, so you have to scroll more and can see less on the page at a time.
I agree. It seems a more preferable experience would be not to use the browser Maximised.
Try dragging the Window Right or left, off the screen, so that Windows makes it half-width.
If you haven't tried Firefox with the 'NoSquint' Add-on, please do.
It gives a quick and easy method of adjusting Page and Text Zoom levels
(and remembers them for each site you visit)
This can be cumbersome or even not possible to fully replicate in other browsers
I am not suggesting you should dump your favourite browser(s), but if you check out NoSquint, you can see the options
(click % box at bottom right of page) and its methodology
Then work out best way of doing the same in your usual browser(s)
The problem with only making the browser half screen is that now the browser is only 960 pixels wide (1080/2=960). Most websites are formatted for 1024x768, so when viewed at a width of less than 1024, you get a horizontal scrollbar across the bottom, digital spy being one of them. This can mean that some text is chopped off on the sides.
So for my FF Half-screen, I dropped Full Zoom Level to 60%, but had to increase Text Zoom Level to 150%
(see bottom right of my OneDrive image)
I can only play on my Laptop 15.1" 1366x768 screen for this thread.
It will still be different for you.
I do have a 22" screen which I could drag out of the wardrobe, but I'd rather not just now.
Set FF + NoSquint to 150/60 and tell me you are still unhappy and I may get out my other screen and say "Ah, yes I made a mistake"
At least, I think you will see what I am getting at, if not a a conclusive solution
And then what you have to do, if you don't want to use FF, is work out if you can set Page/Full Zoom and text Zoom adequately in your usual browser.
The same problem applies to sat-nav screens. Everybody's bringing out wide screen devices when you really need to see what's further ahead of you, not to the sides.
The same problem applies to sat-nav screens. Everybody's bringing out wide screen devices when you really need to see what's further ahead of you, not to the sides.
I know! I think it's just to save money so they can still advertise the same sized screen but actually give you less screen! I think all reatilers and manufacturers should be forced to give the height and width measurements, not just the diagonal, that should put a stop to all this widescreen madness!
For example, imagine two sat nav companies offer the same diagonal sized sat nav but one screen is a 4:3 and the other a 16:9. To the average consumer they'd appear the same size, but if they were told the Height and width meaurements they'd think differently.
In the case of a 4:3 and 16:9 3 inch sat nav/phone heres what the difference would be:
I agree completely. 4:3 is perfectly fine if you are building simple tables in Excel or Access but if you are a power user with very large databases the more real-estate the better. Continually having to scroll a large database is so tedious. Also, if using Queries or linking said databases together throughout differing MS programs, it is very beneficial to have multiple programs open side-by-side.
But imagine if you could buy a 22 inch 1920x1440 screen instead of your bog standard 22 inch 1920x1080 screen. In that case 4:3 would display more. Think of all that extra vertical space!
I think this is the only site I visit where I do get white space either side of the content, everywhere else the content fills the screen as it is designed for widesceen.
If I had a 4:3 monitor I'd need to reduce the size by using ctrl/- and would probably make the print too small to see - especially as I normally sit about 5 feet away from the monitor. Or I could use the tilt wheel to scroll sideways, but that is a pain.
With PDFs etc I choose options which fill the screen, sometimes zooming in if the print is too small.
p.s. along with the previous poster I also use NoSquint as an extra option, but you may not like Firefox.
You are wrong about websites designed for widescreen, most websites are designed for 1024x768 monitors at a fixed width. A few (for example the sun) fill the screen with content but most don't.
All these websites have a fixed width of around 1024 pixels across. This means that they are best displayed at 1024x768. If they are displayed at a larger resolution, you get blank space at the sides with the website in the centre of the screen. If you use a resolution lower than 1024x768, you will get a horizontal scrollbar and will have some of the edges of the page missing.
So you wouldn't have to zoom out to see everything on a 4:3 monitor as long as your resolution is no lower than 1024x768 - virtually no one these days uses a lower resolution. And with some 4:3 resolutions such as 1600x1200 you'd actually see more vertically than a full hd 1920x1080 monitor.
If you zoom in to full screen on a pdf on a full hd monitor it will be huge, and you will have to do a mighty lot of scrolling.
The websites that do fill the screen on larger resolutions are the ones that have something called responsive design. These usually scale all the way down to the size of a phone and scale all the way up to a full hd monitor.
I think the best solution is to have a fluid width for smaller resolutions, then have a fixed width at say 1280 or 1440 pixels across, so that lines of text do not get too long on larger monitors. Unfortunately most websites either use fixed width or a full fluid width which stretches the website no matter how big your screen.
It's unreasonable to expect a webpage to look good in widescreen HD. Humans like to read stuff that's vaguely book shaped - A4 is good. Websites should be browsed windowed to this approx size. Although broadsheet newspapers exist, the content is broken down to panels, columns etc. If this was not the case, imagine trying to follow text across a massive newspaper.
There's a forum I use (not DS), and when people post there using a phone, for technical reasons it ends up huge ie fills a HD screen widthwise. This makes it difficult to read, with sideways scrolling. Although I've seen widescreen websites (prob looked cool on the designer's HD monitor), they are a pain - it's a noob error.
Websites are fixed width - expecting them to look good fullscreen on a 1920-1080px screen is stupid. The OP in post #1 was correct in a way - browsers look good full screen on an old-fashioned 1024-768 4:3 screen.
It's unreasonable to expect a webpage to look good in widescreen HD. Humans like to read stuff that's vaguely book shaped - A4 is good. Websites should be browsed windowed to this approx size. Although broadsheet newspapers exist, the content is broken down to panels, columns etc. If this was not the case, imagine trying to follow text across a massive newspaper.
There's a forum I use (not DS), and when people post there using a phone, for technical reasons it ends up huge ie fills a HD screen widthwise. This makes it difficult to read, with sideways scrolling. Although I've seen widescreen websites (prob looked cool on the designer's HD monitor), they are a pain - it's a noob error.
Websites are fixed width - expecting them to look good fullscreen on a 1920-1080px screen is stupid. The OP in post #1 was correct in a way - browsers look good full screen on an old-fashioned 1024-768 4:3 screen.
Some websites are formatted though to take advantage of a wider screen. This is called a fluid layout where the width of the website adjusts to the width of the screen. Sometimes this results in long lines of texts for websites with lots of text. It tends to work on news sites, video and listing type of sites - sites where there is lots of content to fit in and looks better when fitted on a wider screen.
Some examples are The Sun, MSN, Amazon and Youtube. These look fine in widescreen. Why can't other sites follow the same design?
I personally prefer widescreen for movies and gaming, as it's more immsersive, but for everyday computing (internet, documents etc) I much prefer standard monitors and resolutions.
Here's why.
While a widescreen monitor is good for gaming and widescreen videos/movies
it isn't so good for everyday pc work ie documents, internet browsing, as
these activities make use of vertical real estate rather than horizontal. A
1280x1024 monitor will show more of a webpage at once than a 1440x900
monitor, for example.
When you have a widescreen monitor and a standard monitor of the same diagonal size, the standard one is always taller and has more display area. Thats why I think manufacturers should give the height and width measurements for thier monitors.
On a large widescreen monitor (such as 1920x1080) you will get lots of
blank space at the sides. On a smaller widescreen monitor, you will lack
vertical space. Therefore a non-widescreen monitor is better for general pc
usage rather than a widescreen one. An exception to this is if you
multitask, but the majority of users still use most applications maximized.
Even if you compare a 19 inch 5:4 1280x1024 monitor to a 16:9 22 inch
1920x1080 one, alough the widescreen monitor technically has more space
both horizonatally and vertically in terms of pixels, the the 19 inch one
is still physically taller, becuase it has a 5:4 ratio (see my point
earlier about diagonal size) and so better for everyday work - alough the
5:4 monitor has less pixels, that doesn't mean a thing once you take zoom
levels into account - for example, lets say I have a word document on a
1920x1080 monitor - to make it readable I have to zoom in - but on the
taller square monitor, I don't have too as it appears bigger.
The 19 inch one will display everything larger too as it has a lower pixel
density. The trend these days is to have high resolution, high pixel
density screens which alough make everything sharper make everything
smaller! I sometimes miss the old days when I ran my 17 inch CRT at
1024x768, yielding a pixel density of 75, everything was nice and big. Try
cranking down the resolution on an LCD monitor, you'll lose sharpness and
make the fonts blurry.
I actually currently run my brand new 21.5 inch monitor with a native resolution of 1920x1080 at 1280x960. This resolution is stretched if I run it full screen so I run it with black bars on the sides. Why do I do this? Well, 1280x960
and 1280x1024 are the only two resolutions that display well on it. Every
other resolution makes text blurry and lack sharpness. I have tried running
my own custom resoultions, such as 1800x1024 (which is roughly 16:9 ratio)
but they just run blurry. There is also this weird effect on some
resolutions where different lines of text have different levels of
sharpness. If I choose 1280x1024, the black bars at the sides are slightly
larger, so I chose 1280x960.
I also prefer this resolution because I don't have to look into the corners
of the screen as much and everything isn't as spread out when using
applications.
I'm wondering what all you guys on digispy use?
Could you give me your monitor size and resolution, and say why you prefer that?
I usually use my 21" monitor to view stuff from my laptop. It is widescreen and fits neatly into the unit under my 32" TV. Most of the websites I visit adapt to widescreen display and as I usually sit six feet away or more I have the settings which enable me to see text clearly. I have no problems at all.
I personally prefer widescreen for movies and gaming, as it's more immsersive, but for everyday computing (internet, documents etc) I much prefer standard monitors and resolutions.
Here's why.
While a widescreen monitor is good for gaming and widescreen videos/movies
it isn't so good for everyday pc work ie documents, internet browsing, as
these activities make use of vertical real estate rather than horizontal. A
1280x1024 monitor will show more of a webpage at once than a 1440x900
monitor, for example.
When you have a widescreen monitor and a standard monitor of the same diagonal size, the standard one is always taller and has more display area. Thats why I think manufacturers should give the height and width measurements for thier monitors.
On a large widescreen monitor (such as 1920x1080) you will get lots of
blank space at the sides. On a smaller widescreen monitor, you will lack
vertical space. Therefore a non-widescreen monitor is better for general pc
usage rather than a widescreen one. An exception to this is if you
multitask, but the majority of users still use most applications maximized.
Even if you compare a 19 inch 5:4 1280x1024 monitor to a 16:9 22 inch
1920x1080 one, alough the widescreen monitor technically has more space
both horizonatally and vertically in terms of pixels, the the 19 inch one
is still physically taller, becuase it has a 5:4 ratio (see my point
earlier about diagonal size) and so better for everyday work - alough the
5:4 monitor has less pixels, that doesn't mean a thing once you take zoom
levels into account - for example, lets say I have a word document on a
1920x1080 monitor - to make it readable I have to zoom in - but on the
taller square monitor, I don't have too as it appears bigger.
The 19 inch one will display everything larger too as it has a lower pixel
density. The trend these days is to have high resolution, high pixel
density screens which alough make everything sharper make everything
smaller! I sometimes miss the old days when I ran my 17 inch CRT at
1024x768, yielding a pixel density of 75, everything was nice and big. Try
cranking down the resolution on an LCD monitor, you'll lose sharpness and
make the fonts blurry.
I actually currently run my brand new 21.5 inch monitor with a native resolution of 1920x1080 at 1280x960. This resolution is stretched if I run it full screen so I run it with black bars on the sides. Why do I do this? Well, 1280x960
and 1280x1024 are the only two resolutions that display well on it. Every
other resolution makes text blurry and lack sharpness. I have tried running
my own custom resoultions, such as 1800x1024 (which is roughly 16:9 ratio)
but they just run blurry. There is also this weird effect on some
resolutions where different lines of text have different levels of
sharpness. If I choose 1280x1024, the black bars at the sides are slightly
larger, so I chose 1280x960.
I also prefer this resolution because I don't have to look into the corners
of the screen as much and everything isn't as spread out when using
applications.
I'm wondering what all you guys on digispy use?
Could you give me your monitor size and resolution, and say why you prefer that?
I'm so sorry guys. I meant to make this as a seperate thread. I didn't realise I posted on this thread! I will make a new thread soon.
I usually use my 21" monitor to view stuff from my laptop. It is widescreen and fits neatly into the unit under my 32" TV. Most of the websites I visit adapt to widescreen display and as I usually sit six feet away or more I have the settings which enable me to see text clearly. I have no problems at all.
As you are using it at that distance away, you will be zoomed in a lot and thats why the websites are filling the screen. You lose a lot of content by zooming in however and have to scroll loads.
On a 1920x1080 screen set at 100% zoom, there is lots of unused space on the sides.
But what is really annoying is when a website aligns text heavily to the left. I then have to turn my head to the left to read it or make my browser windowed and drag the window to the center. Websites like Wikipedia which stretch the text to fill the screen make the text more difficult to read.
But some sites like MSN or The Sun get it just right. They have a combination of fixed and fluid website designs. They expand up to a point and then stay at a fixed width after say 1600 pixels.
Comments
I think this is the only site I visit where I do get white space either side of the content, everywhere else the content fills the screen as it is designed for widesceen.
If I had a 4:3 monitor I'd need to reduce the size by using ctrl/- and would probably make the print too small to see - especially as I normally sit about 5 feet away from the monitor.
With PDFs etc I choose options which fill the screen, sometimes zooming in if the print is too small.
p.s. along with the previous poster I also use NoSquint as an extra option, but you may not like Firefox.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/r7dym7rt6oraz2w,a46e0t8uc1691un,uugbupnuycnby3b,5b7ur8dl96qcpl0,i86q5l6v660i63e,8p4jvr96z2alwrv,jau4v4f5mfbmru1,2o6bcrgpgvscxoz,py35ibts2i333yu,7t1zsouds1ocmj4,mqmarifa1uost32,pf3a69bipn080ee,bhb4ojhdx9rztcd,h2u0cdsitto9q84/shared
I agree completely. 4:3 is perfectly fine if you are building simple tables in Excel or Access but if you are a power user with very large databases the more real-estate the better. Continually having to scroll a large database is so tedious. Also, if using Queries or linking said databases together throughout differing MS programs, it is very beneficial to have multiple programs open side-by-side.
??
I haven't checked all your samples but this is how the Daily Star appears on my widescreen monitor -
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/40311629/star.JPG
Not much whitespace there.
Websites are usually designed as fixed width (around 930-980px) because they've got to fit on smaller screens. Browsers on 1920-1080px screens should be viewed windowed. Webpages can't be widescreen - users will happily scroll up/down, but a wide page on a smaller screen would mean side-to-side scrolling - a big no-no. I've seen webpages that have % layout (eg Wikipedia) ie you can fill the whole screen widthwise in HD, but 60cm wide text is pretty much impossible to read.
I seem to recall that when W8 first landed, the metro IE was full screen only - Google home page filling a 27" HD monitor was a ****ing joke - a big expanse of white with a tiny logo in the middle. Fullscreen on a HD monitor is for movies, Photoshop, After Effects, video editing etc - I use dual 27" 1920-1080px screens for that stuff - my Firefox is windowed.
Try dragging the Window Right or left, off the screen, so that Windows makes it half-width.
If you haven't tried Firefox with the 'NoSquint' Add-on, please do.
It gives a quick and easy method of adjusting Page and Text Zoom levels
(and remembers them for each site you visit)
This can be cumbersome or even not possible to fully replicate in other browsers
I am not suggesting you should dump your favourite browser(s), but if you check out NoSquint, you can see the options
(click % box at bottom right of page) and its methodology
Then work out best way of doing the same in your usual browser(s)
both 1920x1080 one has email on it the other a browser with my tools.
works exceptionally well.
You'res looks to be zoomed in as the buttons, text etc appear bigger. The problem of zooming in is that alough it makes everything bigger you lose vertical space, so you have to scroll more and can see less on the page at a time.
The problem with only making the browser half screen is that now the browser is only 960 pixels wide (1080/2=960). Most websites are formatted for 1024x768, so when viewed at a width of less than 1024, you get a horizontal scrollbar across the bottom, digital spy being one of them. This can mean that some text is chopped off on the sides.
Some examples: http://www.mediafire.com/view/w3e8n7pnfl1c2op/Amazon_-_Half_Screen.png
http://www.mediafire.com/view/mi7yynlyglevnqo/Ebay_-_Half_Screen.png
https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=9C3971292A079D29!863&authkey=!ADJJmzDRX05rZR0&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg
Because, in FF, you can select Tools > Add-Ons, search NoSquint and adjust. Actually, here is the direct link https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nosquint/
So for my FF Half-screen, I dropped Full Zoom Level to 60%, but had to increase Text Zoom Level to 150%
(see bottom right of my OneDrive image)
I can only play on my Laptop 15.1" 1366x768 screen for this thread.
It will still be different for you.
I do have a 22" screen which I could drag out of the wardrobe, but I'd rather not just now.
Set FF + NoSquint to 150/60 and tell me you are still unhappy and I may get out my other screen and say "Ah, yes I made a mistake"
At least, I think you will see what I am getting at, if not a a conclusive solution
And then what you have to do, if you don't want to use FF, is work out if you can set Page/Full Zoom and text Zoom adequately in your usual browser.
I know! I think it's just to save money so they can still advertise the same sized screen but actually give you less screen! I think all reatilers and manufacturers should be forced to give the height and width measurements, not just the diagonal, that should put a stop to all this widescreen madness!
For example, imagine two sat nav companies offer the same diagonal sized sat nav but one screen is a 4:3 and the other a 16:9. To the average consumer they'd appear the same size, but if they were told the Height and width meaurements they'd think differently.
In the case of a 4:3 and 16:9 3 inch sat nav/phone heres what the difference would be:
http://www.displaywars.com/3-inch-16x9-vs-3-inch-4x3
But imagine if you could buy a 22 inch 1920x1440 screen instead of your bog standard 22 inch 1920x1080 screen. In that case 4:3 would display more. Think of all that extra vertical space!
You are wrong about websites designed for widescreen, most websites are designed for 1024x768 monitors at a fixed width. A few (for example the sun) fill the screen with content but most don't.
See some examples here of different websites in 1024x768 and 1920x1080 resolution: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMcDdlOHFaVi1KUUk/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMRXEtU3lqYWZCbUE/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMLVBmMnRHM2VDY0k/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMZG1ERXB2b3BjV2M/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMSHpIblBsVjJrNEk/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMZWFwdmVuLTRXR2M/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMU1JranlkSTZxT1U/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMRUlLdHRIcW5mMFk/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMRDF0dTJMSVMxOG8/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMcGs4cjJ1eS1pbnM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMRWJ2dzVTQUNuUHM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMSGVCRkZoNTZISE0/view?usp=sharing
All these websites have a fixed width of around 1024 pixels across. This means that they are best displayed at 1024x768. If they are displayed at a larger resolution, you get blank space at the sides with the website in the centre of the screen. If you use a resolution lower than 1024x768, you will get a horizontal scrollbar and will have some of the edges of the page missing.
So you wouldn't have to zoom out to see everything on a 4:3 monitor as long as your resolution is no lower than 1024x768 - virtually no one these days uses a lower resolution. And with some 4:3 resolutions such as 1600x1200 you'd actually see more vertically than a full hd 1920x1080 monitor.
If you zoom in to full screen on a pdf on a full hd monitor it will be huge, and you will have to do a mighty lot of scrolling.
The websites that do fill the screen on larger resolutions are the ones that have something called responsive design. These usually scale all the way down to the size of a phone and scale all the way up to a full hd monitor.
However, this can make text harder to read on some websites on large monitors due to wide lines of text. An example of this is on Wikipedia: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMUGplaHJPMTYwUXM/view?usp=sharing
I think the best solution is to have a fluid width for smaller resolutions, then have a fixed width at say 1280 or 1440 pixels across, so that lines of text do not get too long on larger monitors. Unfortunately most websites either use fixed width or a full fluid width which stretches the website no matter how big your screen.
There's a forum I use (not DS), and when people post there using a phone, for technical reasons it ends up huge ie fills a HD screen widthwise. This makes it difficult to read, with sideways scrolling. Although I've seen widescreen websites (prob looked cool on the designer's HD monitor), they are a pain - it's a noob error.
Websites are fixed width - expecting them to look good fullscreen on a 1920-1080px screen is stupid. The OP in post #1 was correct in a way - browsers look good full screen on an old-fashioned 1024-768 4:3 screen.
Some websites are formatted though to take advantage of a wider screen. This is called a fluid layout where the width of the website adjusts to the width of the screen. Sometimes this results in long lines of texts for websites with lots of text. It tends to work on news sites, video and listing type of sites - sites where there is lots of content to fit in and looks better when fitted on a wider screen.
Some examples are The Sun, MSN, Amazon and Youtube. These look fine in widescreen. Why can't other sites follow the same design?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMVURpUXAyMmZuUm8/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMbzRQOWR1VVplV00/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMVURpUXAyMmZuUm8/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMaE9CdTVQaklheUU/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56dT4lJdZoMRzdPQ0tESzVjVW8/view?usp=sharing
Here's why.
While a widescreen monitor is good for gaming and widescreen videos/movies
it isn't so good for everyday pc work ie documents, internet browsing, as
these activities make use of vertical real estate rather than horizontal. A
1280x1024 monitor will show more of a webpage at once than a 1440x900
monitor, for example.
When you have a widescreen monitor and a standard monitor of the same diagonal size, the standard one is always taller and has more display area. Thats why I think manufacturers should give the height and width measurements for thier monitors.
On a large widescreen monitor (such as 1920x1080) you will get lots of
blank space at the sides. On a smaller widescreen monitor, you will lack
vertical space. Therefore a non-widescreen monitor is better for general pc
usage rather than a widescreen one. An exception to this is if you
multitask, but the majority of users still use most applications maximized.
Even if you compare a 19 inch 5:4 1280x1024 monitor to a 16:9 22 inch
1920x1080 one, alough the widescreen monitor technically has more space
both horizonatally and vertically in terms of pixels, the the 19 inch one
is still physically taller, becuase it has a 5:4 ratio (see my point
earlier about diagonal size) and so better for everyday work - alough the
5:4 monitor has less pixels, that doesn't mean a thing once you take zoom
levels into account - for example, lets say I have a word document on a
1920x1080 monitor - to make it readable I have to zoom in - but on the
taller square monitor, I don't have too as it appears bigger.
The 19 inch one will display everything larger too as it has a lower pixel
density. The trend these days is to have high resolution, high pixel
density screens which alough make everything sharper make everything
smaller! I sometimes miss the old days when I ran my 17 inch CRT at
1024x768, yielding a pixel density of 75, everything was nice and big. Try
cranking down the resolution on an LCD monitor, you'll lose sharpness and
make the fonts blurry.
I actually currently run my brand new 21.5 inch monitor with a native resolution of 1920x1080 at 1280x960. This resolution is stretched if I run it full screen so I run it with black bars on the sides. Why do I do this? Well, 1280x960
and 1280x1024 are the only two resolutions that display well on it. Every
other resolution makes text blurry and lack sharpness. I have tried running
my own custom resoultions, such as 1800x1024 (which is roughly 16:9 ratio)
but they just run blurry. There is also this weird effect on some
resolutions where different lines of text have different levels of
sharpness. If I choose 1280x1024, the black bars at the sides are slightly
larger, so I chose 1280x960.
I also prefer this resolution because I don't have to look into the corners
of the screen as much and everything isn't as spread out when using
applications.
I'm wondering what all you guys on digispy use?
Could you give me your monitor size and resolution, and say why you prefer that?
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2093896&highlight=
http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2087288
- also started by yourself I see.
I usually use my 21" monitor to view stuff from my laptop. It is widescreen and fits neatly into the unit under my 32" TV. Most of the websites I visit adapt to widescreen display and as I usually sit six feet away or more I have the settings which enable me to see text clearly. I have no problems at all.
....or even 16:10 ratio monitors - now that's more like it.
I'm so sorry guys. I meant to make this as a seperate thread. I didn't realise I posted on this thread! I will make a new thread soon.
As you are using it at that distance away, you will be zoomed in a lot and thats why the websites are filling the screen. You lose a lot of content by zooming in however and have to scroll loads.
On a 1920x1080 screen set at 100% zoom, there is lots of unused space on the sides.
But what is really annoying is when a website aligns text heavily to the left. I then have to turn my head to the left to read it or make my browser windowed and drag the window to the center. Websites like Wikipedia which stretch the text to fill the screen make the text more difficult to read.
But some sites like MSN or The Sun get it just right. They have a combination of fixed and fluid website designs. They expand up to a point and then stay at a fixed width after say 1600 pixels.