Monitor Resoultions

A few people have asked me this question recently. 

"How do monitor resolutions affect me?"

The display resolution of a digital television or computer display typically refers to the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution is controlled by all different factors in cathode ray tube (CRT) and flat panel or projection displays using fixed picture-element (pixel) arrays.

Via Wikipedia

A bunch of mumbo-jumbo, I know. I will try to explain in a way that makes sense.

First you must know the pixel. Without going into too much detail, a pixel is actually just a square dot. The images on your computer are made up of a lot of little square dots.

As you can see in this image.

Monitors differ. A lot.

Some monitors can only fit 640 pixels across the screen. These kinds of monitors make your website appear very large, because the PIXELS are BIGGER...

Other monitors can fit over 2568 pixels across the screen. Lets say both monitors are 19". The "high resolution" monitor is going to make a website appear smaller than on a monitor that has low resolution (smaller pixels)

I will show a real world example.

This is my computer monitor. Obviously I have shrunken the images to fit the blog.

This is my monitor as I currently use it at 1680x1050 pixels. I could fit several of my websites across this screen. My monitor is a 21" wide screen monitor.

This is my same monitor at 640x480 resolution. As you can see I can barely view 2 3rds of my my website because the pixels are BIGGER.

It's good practice to make sure your website or webstore fits within 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels high. 640 x 480 is rarely used these days. Only older (not HD) televisions use this resolution, even though you can set your monitor to it, I wouldn't advice it :p

A lot of people are migrating to 1024x768 pixels so if you go a little wider on your site, it is acceptable. Most good website are about 700 pixels wide or they stretch 100% to fill the page at any resolution. 

To reflect on a question someone asked me before; They asked how many inches is a certain amount of pixels on a screen. You cannot answer that question because as you can see above, 640 pixels is 21" and so is 1,680. Every monitor varies.