A how-you-do-your-computer survey question

Help me out.

I'm an amateur website hacker.
I keep my screen resolution set at 1024x768
pixels........and I have a website that looks
pretty good at that resolution

But I just looked at it in 800x600 pixel
mode and it looked pretty bad. Sucked, in fact.

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?

****e. Does this mean I have to design for
the lowest common denominator? Guess so.

/* Sandy Pittendrigh --oO0
** http://montana-riverboats.com
*/

"Sandy Pittendrigh" wrote in message
. ..
Help me out.

I'm an amateur website hacker.
I keep my screen resolution set at 1024x768
pixels........and I have a website that looks
pretty good at that resolution

But I just looked at it in 800x600 pixel
mode and it looked pretty bad. Sucked, in fact.

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?

****e. Does this mean I have to design for
the lowest common denominator? Guess so.

/* Sandy Pittendrigh --oO0
** http://montana-riverboats.com
*/

1280 x 800

You could build your webpage in a frame with a set size. That way, the
people with smaller screen sizes won't reframe your entire page, messing up
the formatting, but will have to scroll back and forth to see the whole
thing. As long as you put the important info on the left edge, it won't be a
problem.

--riverman

"Sandy Pittendrigh" wrote...
Help me out.

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?


1280 x 1024

Dan

"Sandy Pittendrigh" wrote

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?


The current 'standard' is to design for 800x600 ( which means that the
actual content is smaller than that because the edges of the browser take
space as do the toolbars etc.

It's not the problem it was a few years back, but different browsers also
display the same code differently, especially CSS with older browsers.

http://www.kimshew.com/design/useragent.php


I no longer give a ****, but when I had sites that needed to please everyone
I kept 4 or 5 browsers on my machine and tested all pages in them all.

The size-0-matic tool is free and helps with testing at different
resolutions ...get it here

http://www.pythoness.com/


It is very possible to design pages that scale decently

open a typical page on my site

http://tinyurl.com/mbbj3

and use size-o-matic to scale it ( or just drag the window to do so ) you
will see that all content is visible without horizonal scrolling at 800x600
but it still looks 'ok' at bigger sizes. The content on my site is
inserted into templates dynamically, so that same 'design' has to fit
content that varies a lot ... you can do nicer looking work with static
content pages

Another factor is slow downloads ... more and more people have fast
connections but the last figure I saw was that over half are still on
dial-up

http://www.kimshew.com/design/weight.php

I never bother to look at the "ton of pictures" TRs posted here because it
would take two hours of down load

Now this all is important if you're trying to generate traffic that will
make you money ... but I wouldn't worry about it for a personal site ... I
used to "webmaster" several sites that were commercial so I got into the
habit of 'lowest common denominator' pages ... but I'd suggest you suit
yourself with your site, unless you have daydreams of DotCom millions to be
made G

"Daniel-San" wrote in news:F2Z0g.48220
:


"Sandy Pittendrigh" wrote...
Help me out.

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?


1280 x 1024

Dan

....why a low resolution? Desk PC @1024x768.

Frank Sr

Good feedback Larry:

This is pretty far Off Topic, but it it is helping out a
fishing related site, so think of it as a public
service.

I found a "browser statistics" site that says
37% of all users STILL use 800x600 resolution.
So ****, I have to deal with this one way or the other.

I scaled all my image sizes down to no more than 600 pixels
wide. Now the pages look OK at low res, but less impressive at
high res. I wish there was a way to detect client-side screen
resolution.......then you could use url-rewriting to
direct the incoming connection to one image-size set
or the other. But I don't think that's possible.

"Sandy Pittendrigh" wrote in message
. ..
Help me out.

I'm an amateur website hacker.
I keep my screen resolution set at 1024x768
pixels........and I have a website that looks
pretty good at that resolution

But I just looked at it in 800x600 pixel
mode and it looked pretty bad. Sucked, in fact.

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?

****e. Does this mean I have to design for
the lowest common denominator? Guess so.

/* Sandy Pittendrigh --oO0
** http://montana-riverboats.com
*/

The computer I use most during the day has two monitors, one at 1920 X 1200
and the other at 1152 X 868, but it's rare I use a browser at full screen
on either side,and of the 5 or 6 computers I have to use both at home and
work, none are below 1068 X 768.

But you can find general usage stats online; here's a good one:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp .
Also check your hosts stats information to see what your visitors are
actually using.

Generally, multi media sites are sized larger than strictly e-commerce or
informational sites, a good rule of thumb to cover all browsers, on all
OS's, is to set minimum width to 756 or 760.

This means your site looks good on the small number (and getting smaller)
users at 800 X 600, and by using relative widths (stretchy, as opposed to
absolute), you can still look good at the next two resolutions up.

Skwala
Who does this for a living.

Sandy Pittendrigh wrote:
Help me out.

I'm an amateur website hacker.
I keep my screen resolution set at 1024x768
pixels........and I have a website that looks
pretty good at that resolution

But I just looked at it in 800x600 pixel
mode and it looked pretty bad. Sucked, in fact.

So how many readers of this newsgroup keep
their computer screens at low resolutions,
like 800x600?

1152 x 768

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

All my pages are generated from a server-side program anyway
(http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1463.html) so I think
I'll look into generating two websites. Each page
will have a "HiRes/LowRes" button the user
can click at any time. Then they can get whatever
suits best.

So I think I've got the solution. Just have to code
it up now.

Thank you all. I think I got what I needed.

wrote:
All my pages are generated from a server-side program anyway
(http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/1463.html) so I think
I'll look into generating two websites. Each page
will have a "HiRes/LowRes" button the user
can click at any time. Then they can get whatever
suits best.

So I think I've got the solution. Just have to code
it up now.

Thank you all. I think I got what I needed.

--
Stan Gula
http://gula.org/roffswaps