Surfing the web always brings up a swath of different problems all based on the different settings implemented by the web designers in their signature web designs. Among these problems is a major one that has to do with the screen resolution settings of all the different visitors who may visit any given web design. When it comes to screen resolution, it doesn’t matter how perfect and beautiful the web design may be, it is very frustrating when a viewer either cannot see the images or text properly, or the viewers have to scroll to the side to see the rest of what the site has to offer. It is truly annoying when the width of the site doesn’t fit within the width of a visitor’s monitor’s screen size.
The reason for this is that many older monitors – frequently VGA monitors – have a maximum of 640x480 pixels that they will support. There area also many visitors to your website who have older video cards. This means that no matter how good their monitor and your website, they simply will not be able to handle higher resolutions. You will need to keep this in mind when you are creating a web design for a large target audience. After all, you will want the maximum number of people possible to be able to easily and clearly read and view your website.
So why is it that web designers continue to write for such large screen resolutions – such as 800x600 and 1024x768 when it means that they’ll be sending so many people away from their sites due to the inability to read them or being frustrated from having to scroll sideways all the time? Actually, there are quite a few reasons to explain this web design pattern. For one, there are likely quite a number of web designers who don’t even realize the issue that they are creating. Similarly, there are those web designers who don’t care that some people will not be able to enjoy their websites. Also, we must consider that some web masters have recognized that their target audience are typically equipped with high screen resolution capabilities, and therefore are simply catering to their desired market.
It is indeed hard to believe that there are some web designers out there who can call themselves professionals and not understand the way that the different technologies used by their viewers will be impacted by the web designs that they create. It is hard to believe that a supposed “expert” may not recognize that their web designs won’t look the same on every computer. Of course, web designers can’t always be blamed, since they often have the latest technologies to make their work more pleasant and professional. However, it is up to them to understand that the majority of the internet using world is not using state-of-the-art technologies. These web designers are only trying to put out the most impressive looking visuals for a website.
When it comes to those web designers who know that not everyone will be able to see their website properly, but they just don’t care are the most likely to lose the highest number of visitors. Any graphic larger than 600 by 620 pixels will definitely create a horizontal scroll bar for several website visitors. This is frustrating to visitors who have to scroll in order to read each line of text. Navigation also becomes a struggle because menus may become partially or entirely hidden as the rest of the content is viewed. Furthermore, if the viewer doesn’t realize that the horizontal scrollbar has appeared, they may simply assume that the site is not finished, that it has errors, or that there is nothing additional to see. If the webmaster simply doesn’t care, they’re turning away an awfully large number of people who could be potential clients, part of a potential network, or even contributors.
When the webmaster has recognized that the primary audience of the site has higher screen resolutions, it is quite natural to create a website design that caters to that resolution. While they will usually meet the standard, making certain that a viewer of 640x480 can still see the vital information on the site, the entire itself will have been optimized for their main target audience. This is an extremely professional way to function because it avoids creating problems of viewing the site no matter what the client, and it still gives the most accurate settings for the equipment used by the main visitors.
