web design
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web design | Graphic Web Design |
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Screen Size and ResolutionPeople often come up to me and ask, "Randy, what's your screen resolution?" "Why, it's 1280 by 1024," I say. "Thank you for asking." "Well, goodness!" they say. "Then you won't mind me sizing this webpage so it's a 1000 pixels wide!" I hate those people. Because while they've correctly determined how big my screen is, they've neglected to determine how big my browser window is. I don't know about you, but there are about 3 programs I use fully maximized -- the rest, including my browser, run in windows I can move around. And while monitors continue to get bigger and thinner and lighter, my Internet Explorer window is never gonna be much wider than 800 pixels. Sometimes it's smaller, even. Sometimes not. So how do you design your site so that the layout looks right to all people, no matter their resolution? Go with the lowest common denominator. Now, some people, it's true, are surfing the web with resolutions of 640 by 480. But that's UNcommon. So they're an UNcommon denominator. The common denominator is 800 by 640. But ignore that 640 -- length isn't the issue, WIDTH is. Why, you ask? Because most people can vertically scroll with a scrolly mouse button, but most people do NOT have a horizontally scrolling mouse button. That means they don't mind scrolling down the page. But scrolling ACROSS the page? Oooh, blood begins to boil. So, your page, in short, should not be "BEST VIEWED IN 1040 by 915" or somesuch. If you want different proportions, size the site DOWN so that the width is 800 pixels, max. And, frankly, it wouldn't hurt to be around 750 or less. The scrollbar and window edges take up some pixels, and again, some folks use narrower windows. HOW do you achieve this, you ask? Easily. Don't set your table width to a percentage; instead, use fixed numbers. "width=500" rather than "width=45%". What's that? You want to know the code for determining a user's screen resolution? I hate you. |