Viewing webpages on a 24" 1920x1200 monitor

baby_frogmella

Hi
Recently bought an 24" Apple LED Cinema display screen to use with my Win 7 pc. It has a 16:10 ratio and has a resolution of 1920x1200 (currently set). The problem is when viewing some websites, i get large spaces on the sides. Yet on my 15.4" Sony laptop also 16:10 aspect ratio, the spaces on the sides occupy a lesser area. The sony has a resolution of 1280x800. Is this supposed to be normal? FYI the resolution is correctly set on both pc's. On the screenshots below TBB and BBC news have large black spaces at the sides yet MSE and Amazon websites are displayed correctly:

24" Apple screen - 16:10 (1920x1200)
http://img718.imageshack.us/i/24tbb.jpg/
http://img830.imageshack.us/i/24bbcnews.jpg/
http://img163.imageshack.us/i/24mse.jpg/
http://img262.imageshack.us/i/24amazon.jpg/

15.4" Sony screen - 16:10 (1280x800)
http://img232.imageshack.us/i/sonytbb.jpg/
http://img8.imageshack.us/i/sonybbc.jpg/
http://img62.imageshack.us/i/sonymse.jpg/
http://img35.imageshack.us/i/sonyamazon.jpg/

Cheers

davb

Sounds about right. The webpages will normally be coded with a fixed pixel width (although some are variable). So for example if a page is coded at 1024 pixels wide, on a 1280 display it will have a gap of 128 pixels either side - but at 1920 the gap will be 448 pixels either side.
With a variable width site, it will stretch to suit.

amcluesent

Yep, that'll be right. TBH, I have same resolution/size HP monitor and use it in portrait mode for w'web. Much better.

John_Gray

Have a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk for an example of a fixed-width-web-page website. They stretch the top banner across the full width of the screen/window, but not the news below.

baby_frogmella

Thanks, guess i will just have to accept some websites use fixed width format whilst others use variable format.