Thalasar Ventures

Once thing that has changed over the last 5 years is the growth and replacement of the CRT monitor. LCD monitors have completely replaced CRTs with new computer shipments. This means a design change for website owners since LCD have a different aspect ratio.

The traditional CRT monitor has 4:3 (ratio of horizontal to vertical measurement). Most LCDs have an aspect ratio of 16:9. This means that they are wider than they are tall to a greater extent than CRTs. It’s painfully apparent that most commercial web sites are designed around a 4:3 aspect ratio and furthermore don’t take advantage of the basic design principles to utilize as much screen real estate as possible. The current Thalasar.com design isn’t as flexible as it should be in this case. Site designs when possible should be flexible to accomodate. Amazon uses 100% of the screen real estate while Cnn.com does not. As LCDs continue to replace CRTs, designers should make sure their designs look good in the “wide screen” format.