Calling all webdesigners, which ACD?

[darkus]

Which apple cinema display would be best (past and present) for web designers. I previously owned a 17" MBP with the 1920 display but that resolution was just too high on that much screen real estate and I found myself always having to be super zoomed in while doing photoshop design work, etc.. And found that all my work was coming out too large for people on regular resolution screens.

I was thinking of moving to the 1680 20" ACD display but of course I can only buy one used and see it after I bought it, so i'm hoping to get some feedback from people on the forum.

thank you!

 

[Makosuke]

Well, my answer as an on-the-side web dev would be "the biggest one you can afford."

Having worked on a lower-res 17" MBP for a while I agree that the resolution is too high on screens like that--I've discovered that the high-resolution display conceals compression artifacts in JPEGs that I later got complaints about. On a lower-res 20" ACD (which I had on my desktop, and just sold), they were significantly more apparent. Given that most people don't have a display as high-res as one of the 1920 MPBs, I can also see how that would lead you into making things seem "too big" for the average users.

That said, the ability to have a page previewing at a moderate resolution (say, 1000-1200px wide) with either a mockup or your code editor beside it is VERY useful. I've only had my 27" iMac for a couple weeks and already I'm appreciating the extra pixels tremendously.

If you're full-time, you might want to get a cheap 17" display to run parallel--it'll let you get a feel for how a site will look on a smaller, low-res, color-innacurate TN screen by just dragging it over there, and without you having to spend all your time looking at such a beast.

I'd say the old 23" or new 24" would be bare minimum if you're buying now and not on a VERY tight budget. If you can afford it, the 30" would have real-estate (and relatively low resolution) advantages.