Is There Any Reason Not to Fill the Screen Space on Your Monitor? (1 Viewer)

[Arthur S]

I have seen so many computer monitors set up with about half an inch or more of black space around the image displayed. I use my entire screen.

Is there any good reason to leave all that unused screen area?

Thanks

 

[Ken Chan]

As long as there's no distortion, no. Just make sure you're not clipping any pixels. People just don't know how to adjust monitors, or don't bother. One reason LCDs are better for general usage.

 

[JeremyErwin]

Some CRTs are curved, and the black border eliminates this. With movies, or television, this distortion is unimportant, but on a comupter, menubars, and statusbars fill this area.

 

[Arthur S]

Jeremy

Even if there is some distortion, if the viewer can see the icons, statusbars, etc., why worry about the distortion? People don't spend that much time looking at the very top, bottom and sides of the screen.

I have also noticed that many people have flicker on their screens. It drives me nuts. When I have the chance, I up their refresh rate from 60 to 75 and enlarge their image. Got to be a little careful though, cause I work for government.

 

[JeremyErwin]

On a mac, the menu bar is at the very top... It's very frequently used, as well.

I find myself upping screen refresh rate. It's particularly annoying in libraries, but during college, one lecture hall (equipped with computers at each seat) had really noisy, 60 Hz, screen override 'feature'. Good for giving students migraines, I suppose.

 

[Chris Bardon]

I know some older monitors would not only distort an image that hit the full width & height, but clip the corners as well. In most cases though, it's probably just people not knowing how to adjust things correctly.

There's no good reason not to fill the screen though, as long as you can live with any distortion that gets introduced. This probably isn't too likely though, since even my 17" CRT that I got used back in '98 doesn't distort images. Of course, the 19" LCD at work is better, but that's a little more expensive...

 

[Matthew Bryde]

A monitor should not be distorting the image at the borders. I see no other good reason NOT to use the available space for your screen image.

It's like when people have a large monitor (or even a small one) and run their programs un-maximized. Why work in a small area of the screen when you can work on the whole area?

And ditto on the refresh rate suggestions.

 

[Ken Chan]

Well, for example if you have a browser, you may not want to make the window too wide, because that can actually make pages hard to read. You could use the full height of the screen to minimize to amount of vertical scrolling, and make the width so that text is comfortable to read.

You might also arrange windows so that you can see parts of other programs running in the background, like status indicators. And those visible parts may be easier to click on than icons in the task bar. Keeping those windows small means that you can bring them to the foreground without totally obscuring what you were looking at before. Drag&drop between windows is also complicated if all windows are maximized.

 

[JeremyErwin]

I just throw my mouse cursor into the upper right corner, and Exposé works its magic.