Some of us have netbooks or smaller laptops with ten to twelve inch screens that we take with us to travel light whilst still having access to a fairly functional computer. However, in doing so, we sacrifice the luxury of a larger screen which can make a big difference when attempting to do heavy multitasking or browse/create content that is taller or wider than the available resolution.
Whilst there isn’t a silver bullet for the problem (other than connecting your netbook or laptop to larger monitor) there are a few things you can do to increase your available screen real estate.
- Reduce the size of your Windows taskbar to save more screen space:
- This can be achieved in most versions of Windows by right clicking on the taskbar, clicking on “Properties” and checking the option for “Use small icons” (or similar).
- Set your Windows taskbar to “auto-hide” to make it disappear when not in use:
- Again, right click on the taskbar, click on “Properties” and then check the “Auto-hide the taskbar” box.
- Set your web browser to full screen mode to hide the address bar, search bar, status bar and tabs when not in active use:
- Most browsers will support full screen mode by pressing F11 on the keyboard which can be exited by pressing F11 again.
These tips are fairly simple to implement but can make a big difference on those tiny screens where every pixel counts.
2 comments
Don’t forget the good ol’ zoom function. One zoom-step back and you’re still able to read the text on most netbooks and have a fair amount of page to look at.
Author
Another good tip! A lot of people overlook this as a feature just for the visually impaired but it is a lifesaver when dealing with small, dense content. I use it quite a bit when using LogMeIn on my netbook and connecting back to my desktop (which has something like eight times the resolution).