February 11, 2004 | View Comments (32) | Category: Our Thoughts
Summary: Poll about monitors
This poll asks a couple of questions regarding monitors and web design/programming. Is there a minimum size that you must work on? Minimum resolution? Do you use more than one monitor? Are LCDs ready for web development, in that is their color reproduction as accurate as CRT monitors? What is the best monitor you have ever used?
I used to have two 21" Dell Trinitron (Rebadged Sonys), but have since moved to just one, because I need to get a bigger desk. However, I miss the dual action because it makes life so much easier. Edit file on one screen, see webpage in other. Just yesterday I had about 20 windows open and after a while it becomes a pain sorting through all of them. Also these Dell's are the best monitors I have ever had. However, I long for an Apple 23", if only they would make the bezel thinner.
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I use a 23" LCD (gee, guess which brand? :-D). The color reproduction is fine - if it's off a little, it's going to be off a little on everyone's display regardless of whether _you_ are using an LCD or a CRT. The key, I believe, is consistency: are all of your blues the same on your display (and in code: #009;)? If so, they'll be the same blue on someone else's machine, even if it's a bit darker or greener.
You use a PC, so those "lots of windows open" problem is still an issue. We've got Exposé for now, and it works quite nicely. :-)
Erik J. Barzeski (http://nslog.com/)
I have 2 19" Viewsonic G90fb's powered by a Matrox 32mb G400 running at 2560x1024.
I also have a box with XP installed on it running through a KVM to my second monitor. It also has a Matrox G400 and is running at 1280x1024.
I also have a dell laptop and a 15" iMac, so I have a good range of monitors to test color and stuff on.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
I've been designing sites lately on my 12" Powerbook (1024x768) which is a bit small. The only time I notice it is when in Photoshop. I can't design for 800x600 and see the whole page because of the PS palettes. This is the best LCD I've ever seen though. The only problem with it is that when I test the site on a Windows machine it looks terrible because the text is aliased, the graphics are blurry, colors are desaturated looking, and it just looks like crap it comparison. If the whole world used Macs the web would be a prettier place in my opinion. :)
I'd love to have a second monitor though. Just a 17" would be fine. I've been coding all my pages in SubEthaEdit lately, which has a really great live preview feature using WebKit. It would be awesome to code on one monitor and see the changes in real time on the other.
Derek Rose (http://www.twotallsocks.com/)
If you can use a mac, Expose is simply amazing. It will take care of all that window clutter in a second and have you longing for it everytime you have to use a PC again. Why cant all the monitors just play nicely and get along when it comes to colors. I test my work on a few different monitors and it seems every one has their own color choices.
Josh Jarmin (http://www.radiantrock.com/blog/)
Derek -- In Photoshop you can toggle the palettes on and off with the tab button, which is handy on a small screen. Well, on a PC anyway.
Joel (http://biroco.com/)
At the office I use dual 17 inch monitors (two different ones... NEC AccuSync 75F and Samsung SyncMaster 753df). Color doesn't match between them, but it doesn't bother me much. As Erik noted above, it's going to look different on every monitor. High quality color matching is only really important if you're doing things for print. Video card... Matrox Millennium g550 I think. I run the monitors at 1152*864 usually. At 1280 I get headaches. Dual monitors are excellent, and I could definitely make a case for 3... but preferably only after switching to LCDs.
At home, I have a single 21 inch Mitsubishi diamondtron (used on ebay, about $120 including shipping) and will probably get another one in spring when the snow and ice are gone and I don't have to worry about slipping while tryign to carry a 100 pound monitor. (diamondtrons, if you've not run across them, are basically the same as trinitrons, but the annoying line in the background is grey instead of yellow)
I think it's running on a Matrox Millenium G400. 1280x960 resolution unless I'm doing something that really needs lots of screen space.
Scrivs, re the bezel issue, there are a number of LCD makers that have good quality LCDs with very thin bezels. Some even sell multiple monitors on a single stand with the gap between the screens almost nonexistent. Doesn't have to be an apple to be good, after all. :-)
Derek - Right click on desktop >properties > effects >smooth edges of screen fonts. there's your antialiased text. It's not as smooth as OSX on a laptop unless you're on XP and using an LCD (which should be common sense, really. Try OS9 and it'll look just as bad as win98, if they're using the same type of monitor), but it suffices. As for the colors, they're darker, not desaturated. Try switching your OSX gamma settings to match windows, since that's your real audience when you do websites that aren't mac-specific. Can almost always tell web stuff designed by mac-only people, because it looks dingy in windows. Of course, the flip side is that things done in windows tend to look washed out on the mac. But unless it's really blatant either way (faint background pattern that disappears on a mac or dark texture that becomes flat black on a PC), joe user won't know the difference... just people who do design and pay attention to all that stuff.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
JC: Yeah the new 20" Dells have the thin bezels so of course that is always an option. I say 23" Apple though because of the possible switch to an Apple Desktop in the future.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
BTW... winplosion -- Exposé for Windows. Not sure how well it works and the fact that they don't offer a demo download makes me a bit wary, but it's only 10 bucks.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I preffer LCDs to work on because they are a lot less strain on my light-sensitive eyes, but it's true that colors tend to look different (better, I think) on an LCD than they do on your average CRT (which most people are using.) To that end, I set up a dual-headed system with one CRT and one LCD. I do the majority of the work on the LCD, but I check colors on both monitors to make sure there are no suprises.
KillAllDash9 (http://www.pulpblog.com)
I've always liked and used Iiyama monitors. I've got a 19" Vision Master Pro as my main monitor and my old 17" as a second. The VM Pro runs at 1280 x 1024 @100Hz and the 17" at 1024 x 768 at 85Hz.
I have to say though, screen refresh rates are more important to me than a monitor's maximum resolution.
If I can scrape the money together, I'll definitely get another Iiyama.
Andy Mac (http://branchleft.co.uk/)
Well, depends on the computer I'm using. The max resolution on my iBook is 1024x768, but I don't really do a lot of design work on it. Mainly just writing and minor photo editing. My primary computer at home has two monitors - a 21" ACD at 1680x1050 and a 19" clunker at 1280x1024. And finally my computer at work has two CRTs - a new NEC flat-screen CRT at 1280x1024 and an old (rounded, bleh) Princeton at 1152x864.
I got the NEC at work to replace a relatively new Gateway LCD because the Gateway LCD colors were just too bright and saturated. Graphics I designed that looked fairly colorful on the LCD came out almost grey on many older monitors, so I stopped trusting the LCD. Plus, the brightness of it gave me headaches after working with it for only an hour or two. The ACD, on the other hand, is a dream - if I could convince my boss to get me one at work, I would in a heartbeat. (But then I'd also want the Mac to go along with it!)
Do I need two monitors? For coding or writing, not really. For anything in Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign, though, it's pretty much a necessity. I like to have all of the palettes open and large (particularly layers, history, and the like) on a second monitor.
Ste Grainer (http://www.wanderlost.org)
Joel - I know about using tab and do that occasionally. I just use the palettes quite a bit and it's annoying to have to press tab all the time toggling them on and off.
JC - I don't even count XP's font smoothing as being an option... it just makes everything look blurry and worse than it did before in my opinion.
For those of you thinking of using three monitors, my dad has three and seems to like it pretty well. He has 2 19" and a 21" all hooked up. He basically only uses two of them actively though. The 21" is generally for major apps like Photoshop and Dreamweaver, the right one is just for email, and the left one is for web browsing. I think he could get along fine with 2 personally. He has really crappy monitors though. They are all about to die. One is tinted yellow (can't fix it with any of the settings) and the right one is out of focus and shakes a lot... He really needs to just get two decent ones.
Derek Rose (http://www.twotallsocks.com/)
At work, I use a dual setup, one 19" and one 17". I became addicted to the multiple monitor setup at my last job, where I actually had two, sometimes three trinitrons running off of my machine. Now I feel very constrained when I work at home, where I only have one 19". If you have never worked with a dual monitor setup, you seriously don't know what you're missing. You'll never want to go back to one monitor.
This is a great idea, but I wish it was available in 19" instead of 15", but I suppose that would be prohibitively expensive.
Derek: Reading about your dad's crappy monitors reminded me of my first 17" that I picked up for $40 back in '97. There was a reason that it was only $40...the yoke that held the electron gun was loose, so the monitor would flicker all sorts of bizzare colors. I finally got fed up with it and popped the back off (don't try this if you don't know what you're doing, there's some serious juice in there) and duct-taped the yoke down to keep it from jiggling around. Worked like a charm!
Paul G (http://www.relativelyabsolute.com)
I've got a 12" Powerbook on a Griffin iCurve next to a ViewSonic VP181s LCD. So basically two monitors. Works *great* for web dev. (btw, derek, I use SubEthaEdit across those two aswell. Amazing how similar people's workspaces can be...)
I can really recommend the Viewsonic VP series, they've got good panels and, important when using multiple displays, VERY thin bezels. Plus, they match the PowerBooks/PowerMacs in colour (unlike Apples displays...).
Gerrit
I use a 19'' Nokia 446 PRO (with a Sony Flatron CRT) and a 17'' EIZO F57 on a Matrox G550.
The 19'' runs on 1200x1024, the 17'' on 1152x864.
Only recently my previous 17'' monitor broke and after two days I decided that I didn't want to go without the double monitors again. As you said, Paul, it makes everything so much easier, e.g. with Photoshop, Flash (the Code window large on the right with a decent stage area on the left) etc.
The left-hand one is my main working area with the right-hand one being for all the small stuff like Win Explorer, WinAmp, panel windows etc.
Andreas (http://www.andreas-kalt.de/blog/)
I use 2 Lacie electron blue IIIs. 19" models. The colour between the 2 are slightly different but they are designed to be print accurate. You can purchase a monitor calibrator if you need this feature.
Overall, really pleased with them but wish I had an lcd as these take up a lot of room. They are very crystal clear and sharp.
Kuan
I've never really used more than one monitor at a time - I just use Alt-Tab a lot. But then, I'm a programmer, not a designer. At work, I use a Dell laptop at 1600 x 1200 resolution, and the only thing I need maximized is my Java IDE, and maybe TopStyle Lite.
At home, I just have a cheap 7 year old 14 inch monitor set at a pretty low resolution. I have to have everything maximized on that, pretty much. I don't do too much serious stuff on my home computer, mostly just web browsing. The one thing I hate most about that monitor (besides its small screen size) is that everything is so dark at the highest brightness setting. If I make the colors work on that monitor, on any other monitor it'll look washed out.
I love my laptop LCD screen. I don't think I'd ever want to buy a CRT again.
Jennifer (http://jennifergrucza.com)
I get to use an IBM 17" LCD at school. I like it a lot. The resolution is at 1280 * 1024. This is where I play the most with web stuff and do my programming (computer is also more powerful).
My monitor at home is a Samsung 753DF 17". The resolution is 1024*768 with a refresh rate of 85Hz (I cannot work with a flickering screen). It is all right, although I wished it was bigger. ^_^
What bugs me is the colours on the LCD and my home CRT are different.
I've never had the chance to experience a dual-monitor set-up. Alt-Tab is fine, but I'm lazy. Hehe. I often work split-screen (i.e. horizontal tiling).
Zelnox
Most part of the time I use the LCD of my notebook. The resolution of 1400x1050 is really amazing and, once calibrated with the help of Petteri Sulonen, also colours can be used for web design.
One of the most clever use of 2 monitors I've seen in webdesign, is when one of them is just a simple, 14", low-quality monitor. This gives a more definite idea of what medium user will see.
Silvano Stralla (http://www.sistrall.it/)
Derek, I have been using SubEthaEdit since the early days as Hydra! However, I have never noticed that preview feature. That is great! I use CSSEdit for css and it has something similar but never seen that! Thanks.
As for me and monitors, I use a 22 inch Viewsonic at 1600x1200 and my 15inch powerbook at 1280x854. Color seems to be decent, but I would love a 23 inch Apple :)
Brent
I just hooked up the Windows machine's monitor to my powerbook to try it out and it's great. Especially with SubEthaEdit's live preview, it's great! I can actually watch the html change on the left while I type it in on the right.
Derek Rose (http://www.twotallsocks.com/)
"Are LCDs ready for web development, in that is their color reproduction as accurate as CRT monitors?"
Who knows? Whose to say which has the more accurate colour representation? In print we have carefully printed swatches (the one we use is the "Pantone" system) that says this colour *is* this colour and thats what we have to match to. Thats our bible. We deviate from the system at our peril.
There isn't such a system for on-screen work and I don't see how there can be. Or a workable one anyway. Mix in Mac gamma, Windows gamma, Linux gamma, 16/24 bit colour and what ever else (9300k or one of the alternative "temperatures") then who's to say #000000 isn't white and #ffffff isn't black?
Sorry, it's just one of those "piece of string" questions that just comes down to personel preferences.
Rant over. You can come out now.
pete (http://www.monkiboi.net)
Having worked for a prepress company for some time now and having to deal with the colour issue quite a bit, it still seems very much up for debate. ICC profiling hasn't really caught on yet and I don't foresee that it really works yet.
I'm sure there are some workflows that do work, but we've not got there yet and still very much rely on hard copy proofs for colour.
The same is true for web design I think. Safari on the Mac has some kind of ColorSync support as do Photoshop and many other apps, but actually getting this all to work is another story entirely. I don't think colour is predictable at this point, certainly not with the majority of users viewing sites with CRT monitors where colour drifts quite a bit.
For the web, the difference in gamma on Macs and PCs seems to still be a huge issue. Although you can try to use Photoshop to compensate for these things to some degree, testing on the platform with different types of monitors is still the best way to check that things display as expected.
I cringe whenever I come across a PC not using "true colour" because I know that things just don't look quite right.
At home I use an Apple Cinema Display which has beautiful colour and is great on the eyes - I can work for longer with less eye strain and tiredness. At the office, I split between a 15" G4 Powerbook and a second 14" CRT display. The colour differences are huge between the two. On the Powerbook I can barely see light grays and yellow, but things are much more easily discernible on the CRT. On the Cinema Display this isn't a problem either.
In any case, the lower quality monitors tend to be closer to what the end user will see typically.
Scott Boms (http://www.wishingline.com/blog/)
Use a 17" LCD at work, its nice, under fluroescent lighting (ick) the colours can be a bit goofy and vary from the top to the bottom of the screen!
At home I use 19" Sony CRT w/15" yum-cha CRT on the left for palettes, 800x600 testing etc. I run at 1280x1024 99% of the time, but did you know at this size (on a CRT at least) the pixels aren't in 4x3 ratio like other resolutions?
4/3=1.333
800/600=1.333
1280/1024=1.25
1600/1200=1.333
Put a ruler to your screen if you must.
Today's monitor trivia was brought to you by the letter L.
luke
How greedy of them to charge money for a window-management program.. pfft.
Anyway, I use a dumpy old 15" Sony.
Tom
Here's the link I was looking for... these guys sell 2, 3, or *4* LCD screens linked together with just a thin line between each screen, in a variety of sizes and a variety of (very high) prices.
JC (http://http;//www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Expensive as hell, but those are sooooooooooo sweeeeeeeeeeeet. Actually, I guess if you $1600-$1800 for a good 21" LCD isn't that bad.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I use my laptop 14" LCD with 1024x768 or connect it to my LG FLATRON F900P 19" CRT 1280x1024 when working at home.
The bigger resolution is only realy needed when creating liquid layout pages. So I guess buying some Britney Spears CDs or whatever dull instead of a bigger monitor is a better choice :)
Joel, thanks for the Photoshop Tab-button tip!
Optron (http://wdizains.times.lv)
I don't use LCD monitors except when I have to (but that linked monitors link was sweet :)). Matching colours is a nightmare. I have an old CRT sitting on my desk at home, and it serves me well. It's a big enough room to encompanse a large desk, so a CRT monitor would I think be my choice anyway. I've never really looked at TFT,
David House
In regard to JC's last post, be carefull.
Even so, they are cool. Check these out as well:
9XMedia
Panoram Tech
ViewSonic
- all referenced from the first page.
Sure the prices are a little steap (ok, a lot), but when you consider the price to buy similarly sized monitors individualy, they're not that bad.
waylman (http://www.achinghead.com)
ooooooooooooooooh... I want. And at only $190,350... that's a steal!
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
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#1
I have two ViewSonic P220f's on my desk at work and I love them, but I have had difficulty getitng them synced in color representation, so YMMV. I run both of them at 1280x1024 (any bigger and I start to get eye strain) and I put my terminals, itunes, adium and menu palletes on the left hand screen (the secondary) and I put the main app windows on the right hand screen.
I can't imagine working in Flash MX with only one monitor, and I think I could make a serious case for having three.
Dan (http://inmyexperience.com)