bought a new lcd

[bejamshi]

Hi, I bought the following monitor. I really like this monitor but if I go to any other resolution other than the optimal one for the monitor which is 1680x1050 I get blurry images.

Is this common with all monitors? Could it be my graphic card too?

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10086438&catid=22559&test%5Fcookie=1

[mojoprime]

typically, with an LCD, in order to get the best image you need to run it at the "native" resolution, which in the case of the one you got is 1680x1050. a different graphics card might give you more options for different resolutions, but if the monitor doesn't support them natively, then they're not going to be as sharp.

[bejamshi]

That does make sense, But why did they make it that way. It is kinda stupid, cause when I used to make websites for 1024x768 I could see the whole screen, now it is a tiny area in the center of the screen, which sucks. I wonder if most people will have LCD's soon and if so then it will all be at different resolutions and no standard resolution anymore.

[mojoprime]

did you try just stepping down a little from that resolution, like 1280 x 1024 or something? the closer you are to the native resolution, i think, the better.

[hewligan]

No, close to the default res is awful. You need multiples/even fractions of the native res. But they realyy just don't work well with anything other than their native res.

And standard resolution? Bwahahahahahaha! That's just a fairytale. Never, ever, ever design a web site assuming other people will be using a maximised window at a particular resolution.

[bejamshi]

hewligan but if I do design a site, what screen size should i use?
What if some users don't have WS LCD's?


mojoprime the closer you are to the optimal the okay it is, not anything better but okay, I would never use it at that res, cause it still sucks.

[hewligan]

You can't assume any screen size in web design.

You can pretty safely assume that no one will have a screen size less than 800x600. Maximum? I dunno, you're probably not going to see anything much bigger than about 2500x1600. But the monitor you're website's going to come up on could be anything in that range.

You need to look at the strengths and weaknesses of fixed, elastic and fluid layouts and know when it's appropriate to use each (and in my opinion, the answer in the case of fixed is rarely).

Web design is about producing designs that will work despite the fact that the final output will be to a wide range of different monitors. That's the job, and there ain't no easy answers.