brelade,
Question...what resolution is your laptop set at, including the dpi setting?
Right click your desktop, properties and that should show you the screen
resolution. Then click on advanced and what is the dpi? Also open your Pub
document and look at the page setup...what width is it set at?
Perhaps in the ideal you could have variable width content on a page so that
it would fit any size screen. But that not only requires different software
than Publisher, I think it also demands a difference in the way that you
have to design the pages. My observation has been that if it is a three
column page, the left and right column are pretty much fixed in width, and
it is the middle section or column that varies with the width of the
monitor. Nothing wrong with this, and it certainly has its advantages, but I
also think it probably limits what you can do in terms of laying out your
page. Anything other than the three column approach might not work, and from
what I have read designing for all widths can be pretty difficult and you
end up with some weird results sometimes. At least with a fixed width page
you know what you are going to get...I think I prefer that.
I also think that there is a design principle, that perhaps Mike Koewler
understands better as a newspaper editor, that suggests that there is an
"ideal" width of sentences to make them easier to read. That is why you
don't see sentences that stretch all the way across a newspaper. This too me
suggests one should limit the width of a web page and text boxes.
I also have stayed with a page of less than 800 pixels wide because I want
people to be able to print it, and that is about as wide as you can go. My
pages are more informational and textual than your graphic intensive pages,
so printing might not be important to you.
With all this said, I don't think there is anything wrong with your logic.
In fact, when I made that comment I was thinking about another poster's
site, not yours. That person used an ever wider page. But to get back to my
point, I think you are correct that as monitor sizes get larger and larger,
one of the most important reasons to limit the width of pages (not needing
to scroll horizontally) is going by the wayside. I think you will see more
and more people designing for wider screens. In fact, it was just recently
that I noticed that Pub 2007 now offers a default width of 984 pixels wide,
when before the widest was 760, and a small size of 600. Obviously, even
MSFT has decided that a wider page might be appropriate in today's world.
But I wouldn't make your pages wider ;-)
DavidF
