Maximizing the Asus Eee PC's UI

From Downloadsquad -

Our friend Brad Linder has posted a fine tutorial on maximizing the viewing area of the Asus Eee PC's small screen, which should come in handy when browsing. -

The Asus Eee PC has a tiny 7 inch 800 x 480 pixel display, which can cause some problems with certain web sites and applications. For example, Google Reader is almost unreadable in Firefox unless you do a little tweaking. F11 is your friend. Other friends include fullscreen add-ons like FullerScreen and Autohide. We've posted a few photos after the jump to show what a big difference a little Firefox tweaking can make.

Asus has done an excellent job of designing software that makes the hardware as easy to use as possible. The Eee PC runs a custom version of Xandros Linux. The operating system and preloaded applications take up a good 62% of the unit's memory, but you probably weren't going to use the Eee PC for downloading and storing huge video files anyway.

The interface almost looks more like a PDA UI than a computer. There's no start menu. There are tabs with different categories. And you often don't even see an application's full name. For example, to bring up Firefox, you click "Web." But unlike a PDA, the Eee PC can run full desktop applications like Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and Amarok.



Thanks to the tiny 800 x 480 pixel screen, when you try loading Google Reader in Firefox, you'll only be able to see a few of your feeds.



You can recover a little space by hitting F11, or better yet, by installing an add-on like Autohide to hide the toolbar altogether when you hit F11.



And you can make the screen even more readable by using Google Reader's "U" keyboard shortcut to maximize the reading window.