Hi, Some programmers are designing a site, “using the standard resolution size i.e. 1024x768.” What other sizes should be considered and how easily do pages transform gracefully to different browsers, is this likely to be a problem? The site has alot of full page photos. Any help on this is appreciated.
Here’s a link to the official WebTV viewer (back in the MSN-TV days), it emulates the browser:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070606111421/http://developer.msntv.com/TOOLS/webtvvwr.asp
I don’t get it either. I guess they see everything as a canvas??
I’m not saying anything of the kind, I’m not sure how you took that from my post?
I prolly got that idea from this line:
960px is the new standard. With the prevalence of large and large widescreen monitors, smart technology like iphones that scale the website to the display and smart browsers that scale the website to the printer, there’s no reason to design a website outside of 960 for general use.
To me, Joe’s Average Website == general use… specialised sites I consider targetted to some really specific user base I guess.
But, you seem to get what I meant, so, cool.
I’m not saying that you don’t accommodate people with smaller monitors, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t spend massive amounts of development time making sure that a minority can see everything as though it was designed for them. To spend that time making those styles, plus developing a style to print to A4 for a generic site when most half-modern browsers already do it for you is just a waste IMHO.
Depending on the design, I try to see what I can do re flexibility, and in a way that’s not a heck of a lot of work (I’m lazy, as in the programming sense of Lazy == a virtue). So far I’ve got one site that I just couldn’t keep the design the manager wanted AND still accomodate 600x800… and since most pages are 2-col in some way, that’s not horrible… horizontal scrolling is pretty minimal.
I guess as far as WebTV, I wonder how you interact with it. Remote? Or a keyboard? Or a wii-mote?? : ) At a Perl conference I saw a guy who made this program where you could walk the DOM with a Wii-mote. He demonstrated it by having this robot representing the DOM (yes, he was Japanese… robots… lawlz).
This is what the WebTV looks like. I just tried going to the MS WebTV site and got a forbidden error. I think it’s on the way out. A lot of my members have been switching over to PCs the last few years.
- El Capitan
I’m pretty sure I can’t post the URL due to the forum rules. It is a free hosting service started in 2002. I picked up a lot of WebTV users because the account manager worked well with WebTV and it is a good alternative to the few other hosting services out there for WebTV users. WebTVers (and it’s actually called MSNTV now) tend to be seniors looking for a simple way to interact on the web. WebTV is a pain to design for (and I’m no design guru), but they are some very loyal and understanding clients. 
- El Capitan
Same here! Web on the TV is just starting to get advertised here, I’m not sure how it’s going to take off.
As someone who doesn’t even own a TV, the idea of viewing and interacting with teh innerwebs using a television just blows my mind.
Then again my neighbour plays games on his TV, and with other players remotely, so I guess it would be like that. Still… monitor, monitor, on the wall… who’s the geekiest one of all?
I didn’t mean literally
Exactly and I’m surprised at full width browsers for designers, I thought they’d/we’d be more likely to have it around the 1000px mark so it’s faithful to the design lol
I’m not saying anything of the kind, I’m not sure how you took that from my post?
I’m not saying that you don’t accommodate people with smaller monitors, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t spend massive amounts of development time making sure that a minority can see everything as though it was designed for them. To spend that time making those styles, plus developing a style to print to A4 for a generic site when most half-modern browsers already do it for you is just a waste IMHO.
Of course there’s always going to be times when you need to, target audience or delivery method.
Perhaps they use webTV because they don’t have a computer or mobile phone to use to access the internet and so their TV is the only option they have.
I have a site with a lot of WebTV users.
Wow, really? What country are your WebTV users in mostly? And why do they use WebTV (is it for some specific app or something?). I really know nothing about the mysterious WebTV : )
I think it’s also worth mentioning his previous title (Don’t Make Me Think!) - it’s worth buying them as a double pack if you don’t already have them as between them they’ll give you a crash course in getting ready for the end user. If you want something a bit meatier then there’s Jakob Nielsen’s duo (Designing Web Usability and Prioritizing Web Usability), but they are a lot more technical and cover more of the stuff Krug skims across with ease.
If you haven’t run into this, you might really, really like it: Steve Krug’s new(ish) book, (and it’s SKINNY) called “Rocket Surgery Made Easy” and it’s pretty much about cheap and dirty usability testing. Though he does still write the instructions (it’s mostly a how-to book, he’s a usability tester himself) as if you’re part of some bigger company (but with no testing budget, lawlz), you can easily set it up to work in a one-man shop.
Why do people use wide-screen monitors? So they can see a website that looks like a little strip? Or so they can see a website stretched to 5 bazillion pixels? Answer: neither. I seem to be in the minority as a full-width browser user on a 1490 screen. Users with ginormous screens use those screens to have many windows open. I notice that people like graphic designers and architects etc seem to be an exception: if you check out the gimp talk forums, you’ll notice the forums will make a horizontal scrollbar unless your screen is at least 1600px or so wide (I’m not sure… it’s wider than my whole screen at 1490). Graphic designers, clearly (lawlz).
To state that there’s no reason to accommodate people who don’t have the latest and greatest in mobiles or the biggest in monitors sounds kinda discriminatory. Which is ok if your target audience is really only people with the latest and greatest mobiles or screens wider than my mother-in-law, but I’m assuming you make sites for us regular lowly peons : )
960 is seen by many as a standard because the 1024 screen rezzies have been out for popular monitors for some time, and 960 is somewhat smaller than this, making room for scrollbars and maybe even a browser-chrome sidebar with stuff in it. I’d go ahead and say it’s even likely the most common size websites in general are viewed in, seeings how desktop browsers are still the most common method of viewing websites (in some countries like India and areas like southeast Asia the mobiles may well be greater than the desktop browsers though). But I think it’s a little far to say there’s no reason to build any other size. And web stats can’t tell you how large the browser is set in (tho Javascript can); they tell you how wide the whole screen is.
We have a sticky on this: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=463591 even as you get to the end of it, not as much has changed as one would think.
No it isn’t - many of the new devices for accessing the internet can’t handle a resolution anywhere near that. Also to be a standard there needs to be a standards body (or a body recognised as such) to set or recommend a standard and there is no recognised body that recognises any width in pixels as being a standard size.
GoogleLabs has a site that show what resolution most people browse with:
http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/
I have a site with a lot of WebTV users. WebTV does an alright job of resizing content to fit the TV, even if you have specified a higher width. You’re more likely to run into page formatting problems with more recent CSS specs or javascript. There used to be a WebTV viewer app for Windows, but they MS removed the link. You can still find the app if on some download sites if you google around for “WebTV Viewer”. I wouldn’t worry about designing for WebTV unless that’s your main market of visitors.
- El Capitan
Although I can see what you’re getting at Stephen, I disagree with you in parts
His client aren’t wrong, but education about fixed vs fluid should be part of the education and if it’s been decided to develop a certain way, presented in a way that explains why you’ve selected it.
I laughed when you mentioned your browser width, I know so many programmer mates who do this and you guys seem to be the only ones that do it!
960px is the new standard. With the prevalence of large and large widescreen monitors, smart technology like iphones that scale the website to the display and smart browsers that scale the website to the printer, there’s no reason to design a website outside of 960 for general use.
Instead of spending time building a separate stylesheet for the website to print to 700 odd pixels, more time should be spent on the interface, experience and website goals like sales etc.
The main gripe with fluid designs for me personally though is that with these big massive monitors, you get websites stretching out to 1500px or more! How can anyone design to that size, let alone control how the information gets displayed to a visitor! This is a really important step because people can’t take in long lines of text on a screen. They can’t take in massive amounts of whitespace between text blocks - there’s some really important usability concerns with fluid layouts.
So really, you can’t say that building to 960 is costing your client visitors
WebTV does still exist, but it’s not that popular, I think Stephen was using it as an example of a fixed width device rather than specifying it as something to test for. It’s worth mentioning actually that most mobile devices also use a fixed width model (hence why CSS3 modules for media queries are so effective). Fixed width design is in some ways becoming more relevant but also at the same time deprecated, thereby 100% is the only valid method of targeted style.
0x0 for web readers and anything from 200x200 up to 20000x20000 for web browsers.
The screen size has nothing whatever to do with the browser viewport size since the browser viewport can be only a small part of the screen or span across several screens.
The only sizes you should specifically design for are 544px for webTV and making sure it can fit 748px or less for sending to a printer - provided your regular flexible screen design includes these sizes in its range then you will not need separate layouts for them.
Regarding, “544px for webTV and 748px for sending to a printer - provided your regular flexible screen design includes these sizes”
How does “your regular flexible screen design” include different sizes. Surely it is one size only, what does it mean to ‘include different sizes’?
If I plan for a resolution size of 1024x768 does that mean it is not really suitable for a printer? TIA
I assume you mean you are having images of at least 786px in width if you mean you are designing for that screen dimension. Depending upon browser platform, and so forth it will render differently but usually if it’s fixed width and on a desktop you’ll get horizontal scrolling if the viewable area is less. You should be using CSS for the layout and thus could do so for the “printed” media too, i.e. possibly a different print style sheet. Generally you’d use CSS for a flexible layout that will adjust depending on browser window.
The one size you are looking for is 100%. Using that for the width of your content it will always exactly fit the browser viewport regardless of what width the viewport has.