web pages not filling full screen

[Mamacat104]

I hope I can explain this good enough. The computer is an EMachine, 256MB Ram, over 2gig processor, Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6.0
The Explorer opens and completely fills the 17" screen, but when you go to a webpage, the web page only comes in in half the internet explorer screen. The other half is white background. I've tried several websites because at first I thought it might be the problem on that site. All sites come up that way. I have the font size set to Largest and at this point, dont know what else to check to try and expand the screen.
(Exlorer fills the screen, web page inside explorer doesn't) Looks strange. It used to be okay...started doing this about two months ago. Don't know how to fix it. HOpe you can help with this strange one.
Have a wonderful day
Barbara

[Miz]

The problem is due to a combination of the resolution setting of your monitor and how the page was constructed.

Even though the default screen resolution on XP is 1024 X 768, many web pages are still being constructed for the old Win98 default of 800 X 600.

The page's author sets the size by number of pixels rather than percentage of the window. So a web page set to display, for example, 700 pixels wide will fill the window when there are 800 pixels available but will only use about 2/3 of 1024 pixels.

When a page is set up to use a percentage of the screen,for example 90%, it will fill 90% of the window no matter how many pixels there are.

One "fix" is to change the monitor's resolution to 800 X 600 but you might find you don't like everything that large if you've gotten used to 1024 X 768.

The other "fix" is to live with it until the web page developers decide to accomodate the higher default resolution setting.

To find out if it's the resolution setting, go to Control Panel>Display>Settings tab and click the Advanced button. Check "Apply the new display settings without restarting," click OK.

Then back on the Settings tab, move the resolution slider to the left to 800 X 600, click OK. The screen will go black briefly and come back on with a dialog box asking if you want to keep that setting, click Yes (if you don't click "Yes," it'll go black again and revert back to the former setting and if you decide later you don't like it, just go back into Display and change it back).

See if that fixes the website display problem.