Discovering My Roots

Do you find that you have to constantly scroll left and right to view a page or that your printer cuts off much of a page’s right side? If you find that nearly everything appears too wide on your monitor, the most likely culprit is its screen resolution. 

Windows XP users can right-click their Desktop and choose Properties>Settings to find an adjustable knob marked Screen Resolution. Sliding the knob to the right increases the resolution, which makes text and images smaller so that more information can fit on the monitor. Sliding it to the left does the opposite. 

Vista users can find these options by right-clicking their Desktop and choosing Personalize>Display Settings. 

Lower resolutions (such as 640×480) are often preferred by persons with vision limitations. Well, changing these settings works well on CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, but LCD (liquid crystal display) flat screens are designed to use a specific resolution; and changing it can reduce the sharpness of text and images. (One way to resolve the issue, of course, is to buy a larger monitor.) 

As for viewing Web pages, modern browsers offer easy ways to make them fit comfortably on a screen. Internet Explorer 7 and 8 users can click the down arrow next to 100% in the lower-right of their screen and choose percentages from 50% to 400%. Mozilla Firefox users can click on View>Zoom for sizing options and Google Chrome users can click the “page” icon in the upper-right corner of their screen to find “zoom” options. 

As for printing, there is no standard “width” for Web pages. However, choosing landscape rather than portrait printing usually makes them fit. In Internet Explorer 8 click on File>Print>Preferences, and choose Landscape. Other browsers have similar options.