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Why do I have to scroll right and left on my web site?
or
Why is there so much white (wasted) space on the right of my web site?
These two questions deal with the fact that not all monitors (or computers) are created equal. In the old days, color monitors were designed to have a maximum resolution of 640 x 480. This means there are 640 dots horizontally and 480 dots vertically on your screen. These are physical dots. If you were to use a magnifying glass you would actually be able to count them.
For quite a while this was a “decent” resolution. However, circles didn’t look all that smooth, fonts (letters) were a bit jagged and blurry so efforts were made to make monitors with a smaller dot (more dots per screen). So new resolution standards were made. The next step was 800 x 600, then shortly thereafter came 1024 x 768 and now much higher resolutions are available.
What does this mean to you? Well if you look at a typical web page at 640x480, the text will appear quite large and clunky. Looking at the same page on the same size monitor at 800 x 600, the text will appear smaller but sharper. Again, the same monitor at 1024 x 768 the text will appear even smaller. Eventually it will become uncomfortable to read because the text is so small.
To counter the “small text” issues yet still have a decent resolution, monitors became bigger. A 14 inch monitor was the de-facto standard a few years ago as the size of monitor you receive when you buy a new PC without paying for any upgrades. Today, 15” and 17” monitors are more the norm. In addition, the manufacturers began defaulting their installations with a 1024 x 768 resolution. This means that out-of-the-box, more and more new PCs have their screen resolution set to 1024 x 768.
Now lets look at this visually:
sample 800 pixel wide page
sample 1024 pixel wide page
sample 2048 pixel wide page
If you examine the screens above, you will note that more and more “white” space (in this case off-beige) is appearing to the right of the actual web page. Much of this is considered “wasted” space. Especially for the person with the 2048 dot wide monitor. The site depicted above was designed for a 800 dot wide monitor so those with larger (better) monitors at higher resolutions will see more and more “wasted” space.
Advanced Connections endeavors to create the most efficient sites possible. Since a 1024 dot wide monitor is becoming more and more the norm, we have decided to standardize on 1024 dot wide web designs to accommodate these monitors and reduce this “wasted” space. We are happy to develop to the lower resolutions as well but you get more “bang for your buck” at the higher resolutions and happier viewers as well.
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