Three-Quarter Year Resolutions

I must admit to having been a little bit puzzled (and yes, I admit it, irritated!) by Mick in the UK's remark on my Overnight Facelift entry, concerning the large expanse of space on the right-hand side of his screen. Everything fit perfectly into mine and there was very little spare space anywhere. As I said in my response, I hate wasted space.

Deciding that my hunch that it was caused by different screen resolutions was probably correct, I changed mine to 1024 x 768 and voila - about a third of the space on the right-hand side disappeared and the entire main section squashed itself into a much smaller area, the font size shrinking dramatically in the process. I thought about this for a while, then realised that when I'd made the tables I'd set them for pixel size, not percentage. I therefore popped into the template, switched them round and the main section immediately filled-up the space again.

Having checked my site stats, it appears that just over fifty per cent of people use the 1024 x 768 resolution that I presume Mick was using. Just over a quarter use 800 x 600, which is what I use. I think it's probably the monitor, but it's the only one that works properly on my computer. If I use 1024 x 768 everything is much smaller and it wouldn't even fit into the screen until I adjusted my monitor. Also, my desktop background shrinks and pushes itself to the left-hand side of the screen.

When I last had reason to read up on this kind of thing, everyone was advised to use 800 x 600 resolution as apparently the majority of websites were optimised to that. This is clearly the case with Boggler templates, because my other blog also has loads of spare space when I use the 1024 x 768 resolution and I haven't altered that one at all. I surfed around a few sites using that resolution and found quite a few with loads of unused space, all of them with "blogspot" at the end of the url.

Off I went to good old Google and entered "optimum screen resolutions", which produced this: "For optimum viewing, the screen resolution should be set to 1024 x 768. However, 800 x 600 is considered the 'web standard'. and our pages should display fine at this setting also. Higher resolutions should also display the site nicely." This was referring to this particular site, not sites in general. I also found another that advised visitors to change to 1024 x 768 (again described as their "optimum" setting) so they wouldn't have to use the scrollbars. Is this new preference for the higher resolution nothing more than laziness, I wondered? What's wrong with using the scrollbars? Gives your mouse some exercise for one.

So, if 1024 x 768 is "optimum", why is 800 x 600 "web standard"? And if 800 x 600 is "web standard", why do more than half of surfers appear to use 1024 x 768? I've never seen a single site that recommends that setting, but I regularly come across ones that say they are "best viewed at 800 x 600". Is this change something that has happened due to Windows XP? I am still on 98, so maybe that's why my pages look better in the lower resolution. I can't use the optimum colours either, if I do the page goes all blotchy and everyone looks as if they have the measles.

Unfortunately, it looks as if it will be beyond my limited technical capabilities to alter the template for my other blog, because there are no tables in it, just that weird Blogger code which doesn't even use font sizes I am used to, so I will have to totally redo that one myself. I think a lot of the problem is the fact that the sites are Blogspot ones, because my own websites look fine in both resolutions. They're better in 800 x 600 yes, but that's probably because that's the resolution I designed them in. Nevertheless, they still fill the screen in the others, or at least in the ones I was able to check. I can't go any higher than 1024 x 768 or the screen starts flickering like crazy. Also, with most of them my taskbar vanishes.

I've just popped over to my old blog on Xanga (still there nearly 3 1/2 years after I last posted anything!) using the 1024 x 768 resolution and that looks exactly the same as it does in 800 x 600. However, coming back to this box I am typing in guess what's happened? The whole thing has pushed itself into the left-hand three-quarters of the screen and the font has shrunk. So, I think we can safely say that the problem is a Blogspot one, at least as far as blog templates are concerned. There may be other blogging sites that cause the same problem, but so far I haven't found any.

This resolution is OK, but everything seems so SMALL. Even if I change the text to "largest" in IE, it doesn't alter the text in this input box, nor does it alter the text on my entries on the main page. So, for that reason alone I can't use that resolution because it's hurting my eyes looking at this tiny print. Whether it's this tiny for other people viewing my blog I don't know, but I can't really alter it because of having to work with 800 x 600.

In some ways I can see why the other resolution is better, you don't have to scroll down so much for one thing, but it just doesn't work for me. I don't know if it's the computer, the operating system or the monitor, but probably the latter as it's by far the oldest of the three. Nevertheless, I am more than happy with this resolution, it works fine for me and I don't feel I'm missing out on anything. In any case, the taskbar is far too small with the other resolution, I can hardly see the icons!

Sorting out the appearance of the page wasn't the end of the matter, unfortunately. Since altering the table to percentage size instead of pixels, the site was taking forever to load and seemed to get stuck at a certain point about three-quarters of the way through. I'd not altered anything else apart from moving a few things from the left to the bottom, so as far as I could see it must have been the change in the tables.

After much trial and error, removing each separate piece of code and replacing it to isolate the guilty party, I finally discovered it was my Blogroll. On attempting to go to the site to see what was what, I found I couldn't get there. So, I have removed my Blogroll and will leave it removed until I can access the site again. I thought at first it was because I had too many sites on it (most of which probably don't even know I exist ... HINT HINT). Anyway, I think it was highly inconvenient of Blogroll's site to go down at the same time I changed my tables, thereby throwing me into a state of total confusion. I may have to email them and tell them so.

Incidentally, I couldn't test the other screen resolutions because of the flickering and/or my taskbar disappearing. If you are using one of them and the site really is impossible to read, let me know. I may be able to access those resolutions and sort it out if I adjust my monitor settings. If not, you'll just have to change your resolution while you're here - don't complain, you know I'm worth it.

This appears to be my longest entry so far (now you know why I joined the I Tend to Ramble and Verbosity blogrings). I'm sure I could have said all this in far fewer words. In fact, I could have said it in six short words - "I Want to Have an Affair!". If you're sitting there now going "Huh? What's she on about, the stupid [insert favourite expletive for describing annoying bloggers here]?" you will have to click the link to find out.