HOw to Shrink My Monitor! ???

Interesting ergos: A year or so back I bought a magnificent ASUS 23" Blu-ray-capable high def monitor. its a top pick.
But I have noticed that bigger is not necessarily better for everyday use. As a media display it works fabulous - movies, vids, etc -- 4 or 5 people can sit 10 feet away and with the sound rig I have its great. But for daily use like this [and I have a lot of it], I find that it is too big - web pages are really not designed for such real estate and I find my eyes a bit overwhelmed. adjusting contrast & color etc etc helps, but I rather like 19" better for hard use.

So, how could I create a 19" or so window within that monitor space?? :major

 

Webpages are too big? Just drag their edges in to make them smaller. Once set, your new browser windows should open to the same size. Then you can put several on a page. Are you sure you have the resolution set to the monitor's native resolution?

 

:-Dno, that's not what I'm addressing. were it possible I'd like to create a monitor 'aperture' if you will that is about the size of a 19".
I could do it with a VM, and just hack in the monitor, but that's messy.
yeah, monitor is native. its a lot to look at unless you back off a few feet, but then your lenses don't work so hot

 

I think there's still a misunderstanding here. If you have your browser set to full screen and you are sitting 18" in front the monitor, then I can understand. Note I don't have a 23" monitor in front of me, but I do have two 22" Samsung widescreen monitors in front of me so I think I can relate.

While it is true you will have to move your head around to see all the desktop icons, you should be able to resize your windows to make them perfectly readable and a comfortable size, and so they open centered in the middle of your field of view.

The only way I can think of to shrink the whole display is by playing with the resolution - which is not a good idea with LCD monitors, or by adjusting the screen width and height using the monitor's own OSD menu.

What resolution do you have your card set to?

 

its not browser-centric.
everything.

resolution does nothing but make better/worse use of the entire 23" diagonal space.

 

I know. And you can resize just about any program window. If you resize Word, for example, next time you open Word, it will open to the new size. Same with just about everything else.

Sure it does.

 

Greetings, zapp.

On this Win7 machine, I can right-click on an empty portion of the Desktop, click Personalize, click Display, and there are options for changing the size of text and other items (smaller=100%, medium=125%, larger=150%). Don't know if that'll help, but it's worth a look.

 

I did not get the impression that was the complaint. But if so, then in IE and some other programs, you can hit Ctrl + and Ctrl - to zoom in and out.

 

Hi

I'm not sure why you're complaining, to begin with. I have a 24" widescreen monitor, sit a little over 2 feet from it (eyes to screen), and have no issues whatsoever. I love it.

But yes, the actual monitor menus should allow for changing the display size.

 

Hi,

Does not the monitor have controls on the front. If so why not use the vertical and horizontal adjustments to make the pic any size you want it. I must be missing something here.

Good Luck, Jim

 

That's what I said earlier but that seems like a waste of valuable real estate to me. With large (or multiple) monitors, you can set something aside but still have it available (and visible) on the desktop. If the desktop is shrunk, you don't have the space to put anything aside and you just end up with open windows on top of open windows.

 

JL - actually it doesn't. odd as that is. it has a lot of controls but not that.

Digi makes good points. I'm going to try to break my habits and work with 'panes' of things I use... see if I can get accustomed to that mode of operation.
I love this monitor when I tune in ESPN3 or catch a good video/movie! :cool

 

My monitor is much smaller, 19 inch 5x4 ratio, but after using it for a couple of years,
I find that now I like to "shrink" the width of the browser by about 10% on both sides
and center the window. This forum is a good exmple with text often spanning the entire
width of the screen / window when it's maximized. I now do the same with my text editor.

Never thought I'd do that but I'm quickly getting used to it.

In fact I bought this one online because there were Very Few 5x4 monitors in the stores
and I thought that height was more important than width, especially for looking at source code
and Web pages. PDF documents - same thing.

 

it does take some getting-used-to but many of the nerd forums & such are really formatted for the 'old' screen ratios, so when the page is open to max its a lot of wasted space on the side margins.

I was working early this a.m. in some android forums & such - what really gets me eye-strain/fatigue QUICK is the all white backgrounds with grayish or bluish fonts ... YIKES. I have my brightness set at something like 40% for a year now and still with some sites the glare is nuts - Plus I use Thunderbird for mail and its similar - all whitey with the skin/theme I'm using. I should try some others.
Then, I'm using Windows 7 and for all the good things about W7, they inexplicably did not give the user much control over fonts. visually, its nice for graphics/images/pictures but I prefer Win XP for text manipulation and speed. And the particular Nvidia card I use frankly is not as good colorwise as the older one it replaced [current is a 8400gs... I think I'm about to go Radeon 5xxx series w/HDMI]. W7 gets kudos for the builtin monitor calibration wizard.... it helps immensely, but the shortcomings I think are with the card, or drivers thereof

incidently, I LOVE the colors etc of this site.... very comfy on the eyes

 

Are you familiar with the Snap feature in Windows 7? If not, see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/snap and watch the video there. Snap is a convenient way to size one window to half of your screen.

 

its a nice feature

 

Yes, and here's another Snap feature I forgot to mention in my previous post: Expand windows vertically on the desktop using Snap

 

There is this thing with Some web designers where they think it's Cool to have a very small font
and very light text. Fortunately, if text is too small it's very easy (with Opera) to zoom the whole page.
I've read a number of articles about web design and legibility (it's a hobby) and the consensus seems to be
for 12 to 14 pixel font size and Full White #FFFFFF background. According to some design surveys, 13 pixels is the
most widely used font size. Accessibility sites usually recommend Black #000 on White #FFF because it has the Highest Contrast Ratio.
I have played around with this a lot and have found two things to be true generally.

• Uing a totally black #000 background for text tends to make the text edges a bit fuzzy,
  and generally Decreases clarity
• Adding a slight bit of shading to the background such as WhiteSmoke or Beige or very light coloring
  actually Increases perceived contrast AND adds depth and density to the font

I almost wish you hadn't said that. I just bought and installed a new graphics card to replace the onboard video.
It's an EN8400GS passively cooled which is an improvement in that I can watch a DVD with pretty good clarity,
but I think I had noticed or wondered if the color is as Rich as with the onboard GeForce 6100.
I'm still well within the 30 Day return period.
It's an ASUS card which I think is better than most others.
One alternative might be ASUS EN210

Since you mentioned Radeon 5xxx, I just looked at some Fanless cards at Newegg and found this SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5450 which got mostly good reviews with Low power draw (~20W), but one reviewer said it's WORSE than GeForce 8400GS.

Other Alternatives:
XFX HD-435X-YNH2 Radeon HD 4350 512MB

Any comments or input you can provide is certainly appreciated.

 

@Zapp

Don't know how old your 8400GS is, but older models were based on G86 chip and newer on G98.

Wikipedia - 8300 and 8400 Series

If you don't already have this, get it.
No install - just run it.
NVIDIA Inspector 1.94.4