Back in 1988 Tracey Chopman changed the face of world music by crossing the cultural divide between music and web design with her seminal classic Talkin' Bout A Resolution. A hit single off her debut album, the singer/songwriter tackled the theme of social economics set against the backdrop of the eternal class struggle between the Haves - 30" HD LCD 2560×1600 resolution monitor - and the Have Nots - 10" second-hand Compaq laptop with a bit of dried yoghurt on the top left corner.

Chopman, who often dabbled in various web-coding practices to relieve the boredom between tours, became the voice of the masses. She was able to express the unenviable daily struggle of viewing websites on crappy little displays through the power of her lyrics:

Don't you know you're talking about a resolution
It sounds like a whisper
[A reference to the high-pitch buzzing noise generated by old monitors that temporarily disappears after a good smack]

While they're standing in the welfare lines
Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation
[The frustration of having to queue outside PC World only to find that its shut on Bank Holiday]

Poor people are gonna rise up
And get their share
[Upgrade]

Don't you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
[Oh, I don't know. Something to do with DOS]

Pretty obvious what she's banging on about now, isn't it? Tracey was no doubt also fully aware of the dilemma posed to web designers as to what should be the minimum display resolution to cater for when building sites. 800x600 is now used by less than 1% of internet users and therefore most designers tend to use 1024x768 as the starting point even though they themselves will design on much higher resolution screens. The annoyance of having to change your display settings each time you need to check your developments is something Chopman would have empathised with.

If only Trace could have foreseen all this back in '88 and if only she had access to this website setmy.browsersize.com, a neat little site that quickly lets you resize your browser window to one of the predefined standard screen sizes or even lets you input a custom height and width.

Perhaps Choppers would have realised that at least someone else did care, that there were other individuals trying to reach out to all monitor users regardless of size, creed or colour and that finally the tables are starting to turn. She just might have been dissuaded from penning her song and the world may have been denied a musical masterpiece. I guess we'll never know.

Next time, we discuss the first time Tracey set eyes on Apple's wireless Mighty Mouse and was compelled to write Baby Can I Hold You Tonight...