February 04, 2004
Match your monitor resolution to your task
My monitor's resolution goes up to 1280x1024. Most of them do these days. People like having lots of room for toolbars, palettes, web browsers, etc. So why did I switch back to 1024x768?
I'm an interface designer. I design screens for OTHER people to look at. Most of your users won't use a resolution above 1024. The text is too small for a lot of folks to read comfortably. So I need to see things the way the user would see them. ("Is that font too big?") I found myself losing touch with how small/large design elements and fonts should be. Switching back puts me back in line with the user.
Big resolution still has its place. Cakewalk Sonar is an audio-editing package with a MASSIVE interface. The more room, the better. Since I'm not doing anything visual, I can safely crank up the resolution to get more space.
Another solution is to double your horizontal resolution by getting a second monitor. This works great. You can still see fonts and designs at the appropriate size, but have twice as much room for tool palettes and apps.
Posted by andy at February 4, 2004 01:40 PMA better solution (at least for web design) is to run the second monitor at the "target" resolution... gives you the space nedded to work comfortably (palettes and all) while keeping in touch with the desired output.
Posted by: ColetasSoft at February 4, 2004 08:51 PM