Web designers and marketers have a right to feel cheated — no sooner had they started building websites to match the shiny new big monitors that people were getting with their desktops, than the whole landscape changed. Instead of large, square monitors, the market shifted, and in came widescreen monitors. The shape matched the HD TVs that everyone has been buying like crazy, and the fact is that TVs and movies look great!

This created a problem: nearly all laptops, and now most desktops, come with screens that are much wider, but offer only 600, 768, or 800 pixels in height. If that doesn’t mean much to you, previously the most common size was much bigger, 1024 high — so much more space — whereas now the fold is really high up the page.

Web designers were among the last to notice, with their large monitors. Business users noticed, with their ultra-small laptops, and many design teams were caught out. Read the rest of this entry »