Partial screen with Vista

[rogert]

New to Vista. Several websites do not fill out the monitor screen. Enlarging
the display size still leaves the page incomplete. Are thse sites
incompatible with Vista ? Is there a fix available ?

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Roger,

This is not unusual and also happens in XP as well as Vista (and, I suspect,
in other operating systems as well). If you look at some webpages you may
find, somewhere on the main page, something like 'Best viewed in 800 x 600
resolution (or better)'. That means that the webpage will fill the screen
(more accurately, it means that the page will fit the width of the screen) if
you are using that resolution, but if you are using a lower resolution then
only a porrtion of that page will be visible. Similarly for higher resolution
displays, the full width will be displayed - this is the full width of the
webpage, not the full width of your monitor screen - and it may be displayed
either to the left or centre of the screen depending on the coding of the
page. In nearly all cases, there will be a vertical scroll bar to enable you
to move up and down a page and, where the screen resolution is lower than
that used on the webpage, a horizontal scrollbar to enable you to move left
and right as well. Note that some webpages can automatically resize
themselves to accomodate the width of your monitor screen, but again that
depends on the coding in the page.
Dwarf

 

[rogert]

I suspected that it had something to do with the coding of that particular
web page considering most pages displayed as they should. My old PC with WIN
98 and a CRT monitor (the dark ages) displayed normally. I have my new LCD
monitor resolution set at 1280x800 (best display). Anyhow Dwarf...thanks for
your reply. Do you think there might be a corrective action in the future or
is it a matter of rewriting that particular webpage ?

 

[Dwarf]

Hi Roger,

One of the jobs of a web page designer is to decide how a page looks on a
screen. For a web page to be attractive and functional, it must convey as
much information as possible whilst at the same time available to people with
varying screen sizes. Since most people have a screen size of at least 800 x
600, the vast majority of web pages are created for that standard. If you
look at your keyboard, you might see a clue as to why this is. All keyboards
have 'Page Up' and 'Page Down' keys which allow you to move up and down a
document. No keyboards, as far as I know, have a 'Page Left' and 'Page Right'
key to do the same thing and move a document sideways. People are generally
more content to scroll vertically rather than horizontally. Imagine reading 2
copies of the same article. The article fills both sides of a single sheet of
A4 paper. To read one copy, you start on side 1, read a line and then turn
over to side 2 to finish a line before turning back to side 1 to begin
reading the next line. This continues for the whole article. By the end of
the article you will probably be so frustrated by its layout that you will
have lost its meaning. The other copy is arranged more conventially. You read
the whole of side 1 before turning over to read side 2. Because this is less
frustrating, you are more likely to understand its meaning. Exactly the same
thing can be said about web pages. If the designer can get the meaning of a
web page over to the viewer without making it awkward and frustrating for
them, they will have done their job.
Dwarf