help me format too-big websites

March 16, 2009 5:37 AM

Why are some websites too big for my screen?

Hi -
I've got myself a new Acer Aspire One, have hooked it up to an external keyboard, mouse, and 17" monitor, and almost everything is great. The only problem is that some websites don't want to format to my screen. Ebay is one example. The screen is too big so I have to scroll around to see it all. It's quite annoying for many repetitive actions such as listing things on ebay. The problem isn't with the change from the laptop to the 17" monitor, as they both look the same. It doesn't happen on all websites, only a few. What can I do?

posted by crazylegs to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Without knowing your screen resolution, I'm not quite sure what your problem would be; however, I would guess it'd be your resolution is too low to comfortably view those sites. Perhaps it is set wrong, because I would think a 17" would either be 1024x768 or 1280x1024--something along those lines.

Increase your resolution in your desktop properties. Here's how, if you aren't familiar with it.

Also, it'd help to know if you're switching browsers or anything. Or if you have plugins on one computer and browser that might alter your experience.
posted by metalheart at 5:49 AM on March 16

Metalheart's right--you've probably got the external set to 800x600 for some reason. Up it to at least 1024x768 if nothing higher works and most sites should render properly.
posted by disillusioned at 6:36 AM on March 16

Ebay seems to be about 960px wide. Add some scrollbars and chrome (depending on browser) and you could indeed be having problems even at 1024.

I think 1280 is about the minimum useful monitor width these days. Lazy designers.
posted by rokusan at 7:42 AM on March 16

If you're using Firefox, one other possibility is that you accidentally zoomed in once on eBay. Firefox 3.0 remembers zoom settings on site-by-site basis. Try pressing Ctrl-zero to reset the zoom when you're on that site.
posted by stopgap at 7:55 AM on March 16

Ebay seems to be about 960px wide. [...] Lazy designers.

Agreed. Too many people buying into the flavor of the month, at the expense of those with older technology.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:02 AM on March 16

Yah, that's really annoying. I'd like to suggest boycotting Ebay and other ill-designed sites, but that seems unrealistic.

Doesn't it?
posted by amtho at 8:16 AM on March 16

If the already cited solutions don't work, I'd say the answer is lazy designers. It is hard to design a site that scales properly if you didn't have that in mind from the beginning. Just quickly looking at ebay, I can see no reason why the two main columns couldn't narrow themselves to fit into a smaller browser window. Well, the reason probably is that the content is graphical because that's easier to design, but harder to scale.
posted by gjc at 8:34 AM on March 16

I blame the general uselessness of CSS alignment functions that sap designers' will to live, myself :)

Try this: modern browsers (well, Firefox at least) support zoom functions to fit too small or large pages to the screen. FF shortcuts are Ctrl and mouse wheel on a PC, or Ctrl/Apple and + or - .
posted by Spanner Nic at 9:20 AM on March 16

The aspire one's native resolution is 1024x600, the typical 17" LCD has a native resolution of 1280x1024, change the display resolution and you should be fine.
posted by jjb at 10:35 AM on March 16

I find Opera's abillity to fit websites to screen width usefull on small screens.
posted by HFSH at 10:55 AM on March 16

You need to change the resolution on the external display. Right click on the desktop, select properties and click on the settings tab. 1024x768 should be fine.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:25 AM on March 16

Spanner Nic is correct - FF, IE7, and Opera all allow zooming of the entire screen. All support CTRL+scroll wheel (which would of course be different using a touchpad, but there's surely some similar mechanism).

Your problem sounds like you just need to adjust resolution, but the zooming in/out feature will still help you in the future, esp. on a notebook.
posted by coolguymichael at 12:08 PM on March 16

Opera :)
posted by mu~ha~ha~ha~har at 12:15 PM on March 16