Determining size of window?

[acorn]

Hi everyone, I have a question.

Given that most people have their screen sizes set individually, I was wondering how when designing a web page / site, do you code for this in HTML? Do you just assume that your users are using a set screen size and hope that those who are not, can still view your pages?

[TheOriginalH]

Ouch, if I understand you correctly, this may be a busy thread.

I presume you are talking about resolution size (640*480, 800*600, 1024*768 etc). The thing that you can mess about with in your "settings".

If that is the case, then my response will probably be in the minority.

A lot of designers use 800*600 resolution as a standard. They believe that most users are at this resolution or above, and if they aren't, tough.

I personally like to design for the lowest common denominator (generally thought to be 640*480, but with the emergance of Web tv and PDA's, who knows?). It is not hard to do with a little thought and saves upsetting any users.

Common Resolution Problems:

Site designed for high resolution:
*when viewed in low-res, lots of horrible horizontal scrolling
*images far to large, and often fuzzy (you can drop quality for high res screens, were the images appear small, but this shows when viewed at low res)

Site designed for low resolution:
*when viewed at high resolution, lots of (generally white) space.
*If designed for specific res, often entire page will be "butted" to one part of the screen (generally left).

These problems can be overcome by using the following guidelines.

1) Where possible, test your site at different resolutions throughout production
2) When using tables (that hold wrapped text), try to stick to "percentage" widths rather than "fixed pixel"
3)Keep your funky images relatively small
4) Try to keep everything centered. This stops loads of horrible space on the right in high res (instead, distributing it equally either side)

or, if you must have a "set" design look for your site, know YOUR audience. Don't listen to anyone here or elsewhere that tells you "no-one uses xxx resolution". They simply can't know this. There are overall averages, but show me an "average" site.....

If your audience are in a low income bracket, and perhaps not too pc literate (say you're doing a "restart" website for people over the age of 60 who have been unemployed for 20 years ( unlikely I know), then you can pretty much assume that you will have far more low res users than an average site.
Conversely, if your site is aimed at billionaire tech-head gamers, you can pretty much assume a far higher than average high-res usage.
You see the problem?

There are no hard and fast answers, only site stats and feedback will give the truth. If you want to play it safe, stick to "catch all" (ie low res) design.

H

[acorn]

Hi H;

that was a great explanation, thanks, and of particular interest was how the screens look at different resolutions: something to be aware of, for sure.

Ahhh. It's the percentage vs. pixel rates that I was thinking of.

Thanks again.