Why do msn & yahoo sites have 1 inch empty space on left and right sides of page?

I am using a 20 inch monitor. Their sites don't fit to my browser and fill out the width of space.

Thanks.

 

They use fixed width layouts for the pages.

 

They use a fixed center layout. They set the width of their container (the center part) to be, a certain width, instead of fluid.

 

Thanks for your response.

Can anyone tell me why?

Maybe they could have made it fixed width but two inches wider.

I have a guess. Maybe it's so laptop users don't have to scroll from side to side to see the whole page.

 

It does not depend on the width - in inches - of your monitor but on the screen resolution you have defined for it.
MSN and Yahoo use 960 px width which is standard for 1024 monitors. Any monitor set at a higher resolution will have wider borders at on the sides.

Test it yourself, set your screen resolution to 1024 and see.

 

I tested it. Your right.

It looks like for a fixed layout structure they had to find a width number. So they chose average width in px. of monitor screens, (as you said).

 

Mitchel,

Its not an average, its a clear lowest common denominator choice.
See my post at: ttp://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1877101

NOTE (edited): The system sill does not allow me to make a post with an address, so please add the missing h before the ttp://

 

Thanks. I will check it out.