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Monday ... hmmm I think I am beginning to dislike Monday's with a degree of high intensity. I certainly don't hate Monday's but I'm definitely getting beyond the 'meh' stage about this day of the week.

It's not that it's the first day of the working week ... Steve and I work every day. It's more a case of just about everything that could go wrong does go wrong on a Monday and this Monday has been a doozy.

Steve fired up his printer this morning to print some stuff for a client and he got an error message that, when translated into normal English, means it's time for a new printer. It's cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy the print-head for the old one.

Then an ad that was supposed to appear in the local newspaper today ... in time for the last two weeks of business before Christmas ... didn't appear. It seems that someone at the local paper forgot to put it into the mix for today's edition.

I'm still deciding whether administering a good bitch-slapping would be more appropriate than a rather large discount on the cost when they finally do get round to running the ad. At the moment the bitch-slapping option is way out in front!

At the time I lodged the ad the paper's ad manager asked me why I'd never advertised in the paper before ... well now he doesn't have to wonder any more does he?

Gah! Mondays! I am so over them!

And now I'm over that little hissy fit maybe we can talk about something else.

Screen resolutions
If you're a regular reader then you will have heard me talk about these before. If you're new to this column then I've got to tell you that if you're still trying to design websites for a fluid width rather than a fixed width it's time you took a look around at the screen resolutions that are coming out on new monitors.

Last week Steve picked up a third monitor to add to one of the machines that he works on continually. The other two monitors that are connected to that computer are set at 1440x900 ... it's a nice standard setting for 19 inch wide-screen monitors these days.

Well it's as 'standard' as anything can be these days. Those two monitors shipped pre-set at the 1440x900 size and that suited Steve. Of course Steve presumed that the new wide-screen monitor he was picking up was another standard 19 inch wide-screen monitor but it was only when he got it home that he noticed that the box actually described it as an 18.5 inch monitor.

Now you might think that a difference of half an in inch wouldn't make much difference when it comes to resolution but if you did then you'd be about as wrong as Steve was. The resolution for the 18.5 inch monitor is 1366x768 and that can really distort things unless you go back and update the settings in Properties. So you have to wonder how many people actually buy a new monitor and never check the settings. At first everything Steve looked at was very distorted and the worst things were the sites that were set for 100%.

The sites that were set for a fixed width were still a little distorted but nothing like the ones that were completely fluid.

Mobile web sites
Speaking of screen resolutions, are you designing sites for mobile devices yet? There's news out there that suggests that Google has its very own smartphone and it's even been given to Google employees to test.

Once that hits the streets you can be sure that the use of mobile devices to surf the Net is going to grow incredibly. Even now we're seeing a lot of people around the globe use mobile phones to grab information online and a smartphone with Google's name on it will be enough to encourage many more to start accessing the web through a hand-held device.

There are also some adult sponsors out there who are offering content that's aimed at cell phone users and the sponsors are even offering promotional content for their affiliates to use so why not jump in and see if you can start making money there too.

The most important things to remember are that you're designing for a very small screen size ... around 320x240 and certainly nothing that requires a cell phone user to have to scroll sideways ... and you have to keep file sizes way down.

Using a cell phone to surf the Net can be a hassle so you have to make your sites as user-friendly as possible or people aren't going to stick around to see what you're trying to sell them.

And that's it for me ... maybe next Monday will be more user-friendly for me ... I can but hope.