LCD Newbie question about Web display on a 20" LCD

[Ken90630]

Hey, All:

This is probably a dumb question, but I'm a newbie when it comes to LCD monitors, so I ask in advance for your tolerance.

When using a 20" LCD monitor at its default resolution of 1600 x 1200 to view Web content, will the Web pages fill up the entire screen or will there be some 'empty,' unused space on the right side of the screen?
Reason I ask is that with my 19" CRT here at home, running at 1024 x 768 resolution, Web pages often fill up the entire screen. On the 21" CRT I used to use at work, however, Web pages would only fill up about 3/4 of the screen and there'd be some blank, unused space on the right side. Of course, decreasing the overall resolution made everything bigger and "filled things up," but that's not the solution I'd want.

A guy at CompUSA's Apple store told me recently that "it depends on the browser being used" and that "good browsers like Mozilla, Opera and Safari will fill up the screen regardless of the resolution your monitor is set at." Is this true?

Since I've heard that image quality really suffers on LCDs when you stray from their optimal resolution, I'd rather not have to lower it just to fill up the screen during Web surfing.

From your experiences, what can you guys tell me about this?

PS: I'd like to keep this thread confined to specific results with 20" LCDs (or 21"). Thanks.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

if it does it with a CRT it wil do it with LCD.....thats why some sites say recommend viewing at 800x600 or something.lol

not sure bout mozilla etc......explorer 6 does for me, and i am in the unfortunate position of owning a monitor that cant even do 1280x1024 reliably

they will have only filled so much space themselves and will have to use a size thats going to suit the majority or users.....by using a large res like 1600x1200 isnt goin to change anthing.....its like having a sheet of paper on a small table then moving it to a large table...the table area has increased but becuase the guy who rote the paper only used A4 moving to a bigger table makes it seem smaller....so u are going to have blank space

 

[nitromullet]

The coolest thing about having more real estate (aside from gaming) is that you don't have to browse full screen anymore. You can actually keep your browser(s) windowed and do other stuff on the side without having to minimize the browser.

 

[Ken90630]

So it actually has more to do with the resolution that the Web page was written with rather than the browser we're using to view the page?

That would make sense now that I'm thinking about it more. MSN.com, for instance, only fills up about, say, 4/5 of the screen (left to right) on my 19" CRT running at 1024 x 768. There's just empty blue space on the right side. But Anandtech.com fills up the whole screen, and I don't have to use the scroll bar down at the bottom of the screen to scroll right to left. This is NICE! (Anyone happen to know what res Ananadtech.com is optimized for?)

So is there really no easy answer to my original question, and would we all have to adjust our screen resolution to what each Web page designer used if we want every page we view to fill up the screen? This is obviously not feasible, and I agree with Otis that 800 x 600 is pretty laughable.

Am I thinking correctly here?

Ken