Sara writes: <<I thought it was standard practice to use scalable screens in developing web sites - you define the minimum, and for larger screens, it resizes everything.>>
It's *my* standard practice. Most people don't know and don't care. And, as I've now found, not all browsers support it--no suprise that MS IE can't be bothered to display things according to html/xhtml web standards, of course! << Most programs, like Dreamweaver, have this feature built in - put it in your template and have at it.>> I don't use programs to build my sites, because they add all sorts of proprietarial crud. For example, from one site I have to maintain that was built in Adobe PageMill (and not having anything to do with resizing the width): <p><b><font size="+2" face="Arial">Winter 2008 - Spring 2008 Classes</font></b><a name="anchor55183"></a></p> This is non-standard code--and that's after I cleaned up all caps to be lower case like it's supposed to be. Embedded styling info shouldn't be there (font size="-2" face="Arial") and the <a name="anchor55183"> is an artifact that ONLY Adobe PageMill uses, can be stripped right out without making a difference anywhere--so why does Adobe PageMill put it in? On a whim, I guess. It *should* be something like: <h2>Winter 2008 - Spring 2008</h2> with the headline <h2> tags styled in an exterior stylesheet if the designer wants different colors, sizes, fonts, etc from the default values. And, as another comment on that site, it's built to a standard width in pixels, as are most sites, so it doesn't resize for different display devices. Fortunately, it's built to display in a screen resolution of 800 x 600, so it doesn't break in largeer devices, and very few people seriously access websites using a narrower width (though, if you do a lot of online work, and have two or more browser windows on side-by-side displaying simultaneously, even the widest computer screen needs the websites to resize for decent display). Many sites are built to 1000 or more pixels wide, which implements horizontal scrolling to read the pages if your viewer is smaller--a very big pain for those of us who are displaying at 800 pixels wide. (And, in case you're wondering why I don't do something about this site--the boss is very attached to the site she built, and has a background in print media--very bad combo for good code, but I have discreetly been cleaing it up as I have time :) Other programs for building websites are just as bad, or worse. I hand code, and so avoid those problems (provided I can stay up-to-date with the standards :) One last comment--it's very easy to learn to code your own website, if you want to give it a try. I taught myself in two weeks, from tutorials on the Internet (I recommend <http://www.w3schools.com/> as they are part of the organization that sets the standards, so it's the most up-to-date tutorial around), going from a templated site that was blah to more or less what's up today, my own unique look--in just two weeks of maybe a couple hours a day, working without any help other than a couple tutorials. All you gotta remember is the old saw about programming: "garbage in, garbage out" 99% of the time, if something doesn't display the way you want, your code is wrong. At least, if displayed in browser that's compliant with the standards--IE usually isn't :) Try Firefox or Opera--both are compliant, and are free downloads (and are less prone to viruses, and take much less space on the computer and.... :) OK, nuff about coding websites, before Ron kicks me off the list <pleading, on knees and hands together> <g> But I couldn't resist the chance to preach a little to anyone willing to listen about coding to standards :) Holly
