Widescreen monitor and web design

[swachtma]

Hello everyone,

I'm thinking of making a monitor purchase and switching form a 15" standard to a 19" wide. I was wondering though if thats going to cause me problem for web design because of the odd screen resolution ratio. Does anyone happen to know if theres any way to creat like a sandbox on your monitor with a lower resolution?

You know how if you put a widescreen DVD on a standard TV it just blacks out an area above and below the movie to simulate widescreen? Thats what I'm trying to find only for my computer so I can run in 1024x768 and such when I need to. If anyone knows a way I could do this I'd really appreciate it.

Regards,
Scott

[officeli0n]

I have this model http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcdtv/n3251w/
its a view sonice 32" wide screen. I am a graphic/web designer. I don't run into to many problems running the max res. There is a function on my remote to change it to standard resolutions and it "sandboxes" it except with the blackouts on the sides. So it will take care of your concerns. You will never beat the color aspect of the monitor. The only thing you have to remember is that most people that will view your work will not see the colors as well as you do. It stinks but you can notice an ever so slight hue adjustment on this monitor where as a standard vga home user would not. So keep that in mind when designing. View sonic has some very nice 20" wides that are much more affordable. I think I paid 760.00 for this one from one of our distributors. The 20" should be under 400.00. Let me know if you have any questions or shoot me an email if you need help with models. View sonic is one of the best. And with everything else, you get what you pay for.

[felgall]

Any properly designed web page should display correctly regardless of the resolution. After all not everyone has their browser maximized to start with.

[swachtma]

I'm aware of that but I'd like to do the majority of my developement under standard resolution because it IS the standard right now. Sure everything should display regardless of resolution but its just not possible to control everything so why not tailor your design to be the best it can for the largest numbe rof people.

[Sunny G]

You still could display at the normal resolutions but the picture would just be stretched. Also, the Webdeveloper Firefox Extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/60/):cool: can set your browser window to appear at any resolution you set it at, including the standard 1024 x 768, or 800 x 600:)

[willis60]

I have this model http://www.viewsonic.com/products/desktopdisplays/lcdtv/n3251w/
its a view sonice 32" wide screen. I am a graphic/web designer. I don't run into to many problems running the max res. There is a function on my remote to change it to standard resolutions and it "sandboxes" it except with the blackouts on the sides. So it will take care of your concerns. You will never beat the color aspect of the monitor. The only thing you have to remember is that most people that will view your work will not see the colors as well as you do. It stinks but you can notice an ever so slight hue adjustment on this monitor where as a standard vga home user would not. So keep that in mind when designing. View sonic has some very nice 20" wides that are much more affordable. I think I paid 760.00 for this one from one of our distributors. The 20" should be under 400.00. Let me know if you have any questions or shoot me an email if you need help with models. View sonic is one of the best. And with everything else, you get what you pay for.

I am also in the market for ViewSonic N3251w 32" LCD TV. I have been
reading expert reviews and that has been useful to me. It may be help
you too. I had been using PCWorld.com, cnet.com to find reviews. Yesterday I also used PriceGrabber’s expert review tab (http://www.pricegrabber.com/info_expertreviews.php/masterid=21235669)
and found a site (www.smartratings.com) that aggregates expert reviews. It only covers a few categories but it is pretty neat. Just my $.02.

[felgall]

When you have a monitor that is larger than normal the simplest solution is to not open it full screen but rather open it to the size it would open on the smaller monitor you want to check.

[WebJoel]

Firefox + WebDeveloper extention: Screenshot :)

These are the only two resolution sizes I bother to check.