About
History of the LCD test pages
Around the end of 2006, I needed to replace my CRT monitor. I didn't like the LCD screens at my work, and I wanted some way to check the monitors in the store with my own eyes. I could not find many suitable test images on the web, so I decided to make my own test images. I placed them on my website page and to my surprise, they became quite popular. Inspired by discussions about these test images that I found on forums, I refined the explanations and added many new test images.
How these images are created
You may wonder what kind of tools I use to create these test images. Well, they are all produced by small programs that I wrote in C++. I add text annotations by hand using the GIMP as an image editor.
And the interesting part: I do almost all of it while sitting in the couch with my Thinkpad T23 (a laptop from around 2002) with an LCD screen that is pretty lousy to modern desktop standards. :)
This site and Internet Explorer
This site may not render well in Internet Explorer. I don't use Windows myself, so I can only occasionally test this site in Internet Explorer. Almost every time it turns out that parts of the page are missing or completely messed up because Internet Explorer is infested with bugs. Compatibility problems almost never occur between other mainstream, standard-supporting browsers. However, Internet Explorer at random refuses to align parts of a web page correctly, or even makes parts completely disappear. See for example the Response time test:
Response time test in Internet Explorer 6 (top) and Opera 9 (bottom). IE7 is not much better.
Because writing work-arounds is time-consuming and requires me to have access to a Windows computer, the site may have problems when displayed in Internet Explorer. The alternatives for Internet Explorer are free, so I recommend you to download and install one of them:
If you are interested, there is a test page on the web that shows very clearly how well different browsers handle the positioning and the display of page elements. It's the Acid 2 test. Other web sites have lists of known bugs in Internet Explorer, which give you an idea of what web developers have to deal with. The long-awaited-for Internet Explorer 7 still has plenty of bugs, so I personally think it is time to abandon IE altogether.
Contact
For questions, you can contact me at hankwang (at) lagom (dot) nl.
Translations
These test pages are now available in English and Simplified Chinese. Many thanks to Freddie Wu for the Simplified Chinese translation. If you would like to translate the site in your own language, you are welcome to contact me. I am especially interested in Japanese, German, and Spanish.
Privacy policy and cookies
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Please note that, as with all websites, your IP address, web browser version, and referring page (from where you clicked to get here) is logged whenever you request a page from this website, without any use of cookies. This logged information is used for statistical purposes, but no personally identifiable information from it is shared with third parties.
Copyright
© Copyright Han-Kwang Nienhuys, 2008-2015. The text and accompanying LCD test images may not be redistributed. This includes placing the images on other websites, either as a copy or through hotlinking. However, permission is granted to keep a copy of these images for personal, noncommercial use.
If you want to include thumbnails of my test images on another web page, then please ask me for permission. Usually, I will give you permission if you use one or two thumbnails on the web with proper credits, but you have to ask me first.
