h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You need to set your screen resolution to 1024 x 768. Then you will be able to see the full width without having to drag scroll-bars around.

Does your display support 1024 x 768?

OK OK thats all too tech for little old me!!(take note the word little now lost 32 3/4lbs!got 5-7 1/2lbs to go to get to goal yippee) All i know how to do is e mail, h2g2, mesageboard, 1 chat room, and write my talks and print them off!! See i told you i was a novice. Perhaps one day i may just get the hang of this... but until then thank you for the advice. Diane

Minimise all your windows and right-click on the desktop. Select Properties. When the Display Properties box appears, click the Settings tab. What is the Display area set to? Can you increase it? How many colours is it set to etc etc?

Nige xXx

I have done that and it says 81 bytes 8192 bytes used...don't know what that all means. It did not meantion anything about colours either. Ta Diane x

Oo-er! What computer are you using? PC with Windows? If Windows, what version? Macintosh?

I don't know what computer it is as it was a made up one froma shop, i use windows 98

I think you must have right-clicked on an icon - one of those little pictures possibly at the left hand side of your desktop.

Right-click on the background picture and select Properties. Do you get a box called Display Properties?

OK i have done that and it says compaq v500 on intel (R) 810 chipset Graphics Criver (DC100) SCREEN AREA 640 by 480 pixels.
Now what all that means i have no idea.

A-ha! Now we're getting somewhere. Ignore the techno-babble. The important bit is the "SCREEN AREA 640 by 480 pixels". That's the resolution your display is set to.

Is there any mention of number of colours (256, 65535 or 16.7 million) or colour quality (8bit, 16bit, 24bit, 32bit etc) in the Display Properties - Settings box?

Can you drag the little slider to the right to get 800 by 600 pixels? If you can, is there any change in the number of colours or colour quality? If not, click Apply, then OK. You should be able to see much more stuff on the screen and the icons and writing will be smaller. If you don't like the look of this, repeat the previous procedure and set back to 640 by 480.

Most web-sites are designed to be viewed at 800 by 600 pixels.

Thank you Nige, i will try later as i am at work soon and i want to remember what i have done, so will let you know later Diane x