The choice of screen

The video monitor plays a less important role in viewing the web than the processor or the modem but nonetheless you will be more comfortable looking at a good quality colour picture. The old standard for colour VDUs was a 14" VGA. Happily the 14" screen has disappeared from current specifications and the 15" or 17" SVGA screen has become the standard. Screen resolution, amongst other things, determines the quality of picture on your screen. The picture, as you probably know, is made up of pinpoints of light. These are called pixels. The more pixels per square inch of screen, other things being equal, the better quality the picture. The old screens had a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. Most modern monitors have a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels or higher. A good quality, 17" flat screen, set to a resolution of 1024 x 768 or 1152 x 864 pixels, is probably ideal for most people. With screens larger than 19", set to even higher resolutions, however, web pages can become too small to be easily legible.

A website will not only look different on different web browsers but it will also look different at various screen resolutions, which is another problem for the website designer to contend with.

	Other considerations

The accuracy of colour rendition will vary from screen to screen, just as it does on television sets. So if you are showing products that come in a range of colours you cannot be sure, no matter how accurately the colour has been reproduced in a photograph or colour swatch, that the visitors screen will display the colours correctly. It is, therefore, always advisable to include a disclaimer.