Monitor Setting

The best monitor setting for the Web is 800 X 600 pixels with thousands of colors. Here's why. You may have already noticed that your monitor can be set to different screen resolutions and set to display different numbers of colors. Let's walk through it.

Screen Resolution

Most people think of resolution in terms of photographs or television. In those media, resolution means sharpness. But in the computer world, screen resolution refers to the dimensions of the pixels displayed on a monitor. Your computer probably came set to a resolution of 640 X 480 pixels. That means that your computer will display a screen of 640 pixels wide and 480 pixels high on the monitor -- whether you have a 14, 15, or 17-inch monitor. The size of the monitor does not determine the screen resolution. But the bigger the monitor, the bigger the screen resolution you can use. Try it for yourself. If you have a 14 or 15-inch monitor, switch the resolution from 640 X 480 to 800 X 600 and to 1024 X 768 if your video card supports it. You will quickly see that everything gets smaller as the resolution goes up. That's because the monitor is displaying a larger number of pixels in the same screen space. Most people find everything is too small at 1024 X 768 on a 14-inch monitor, but try it on a 17-inch monitor and you'll find you have tons of screen real estate you can use.

On the Web you want as large a resolution as you can get. The larger the resolution, the more you can fit on the screen. Web pages are almost always too large to fit on one screen, so a larger resolution is better. We recommend using a resolution of 800 X 600 if you have a 14 or 15-inch monitor, and a resolution of 1024 X 768 for 17" and larger monitors.

Under settings, there is a control panel folder with an icon called Display. Double-click on the icon. Then click the Settings tab to see the current screen resolution.

Try changing the resolution to the largest you can, probably 1024 X 768. Unless you have a 17-inch or larger monitor, everything will be too small to see. But you will have a lot of screen space.

Screen Colors

Setting the number of colors is also important. Unless you are working with professional graphics and photography and have a computer with lots of memory, avoid using 16 million colors. The best practical resolution to use on the Web is 64,000 colors. You can get near photographic quality using thousands of colors, and you'll find many web graphics, like those on Learn the Net, look much better than when your display is set to only 256 colors. One thing to keep in mind, many multimedia CD-ROMs with animations require you to set your display to 256 colors. Even though you may need to change your color settings once in awhile, you will find the Web more visually exciting if you surf at thousands of colors.