On Sun, 2005-10-16 at 15:43 +0100, Karl Lattimer wrote: > I am going to overlay the logo a little, it will slightly encroach on > the menu, that way using a little less space. This requires a serious > look at the css, and also I must use a DX filter so I don't exclude > microsoft ie users.
Using AlphaImageLoader is a pain in the ass, but at least it's an option available. Doesn't work under Crossover IE, but who does serious browsing that way anyway. :) IE7 will support transparent png, but I have a feeling that MS will take the easy way out and just implicitly use the dx filter if the png being loaded is not fully opaque. > The site is still reasonable on 1600x1200 Well, for certain definitions of reasonable. At 1600x1200, the page is more whitespace than it is content. > but websites should ALWAYS be designed to work on low res displays, > think page not screen! Think page not screen. Agreed! Well said! Hence the reason that fixed-width layouts are inferior to free-form layouts: they make assumptions about the user's screen that may or may not be true. At the very least you need to cater to some assumed lowest common denominator (800x600 in your case). > I've specifically designed the site to work at 800x600 so it is easily > viewable on a freevo box running firefox on a tv. Interesting goal. But I run Freevo at 640x480 on my tv. (NTSC is 480 lines. Running at 800x600 requires the video card to do interpolation.) > A variable width page wouldn't look as good, and i'd have to use > tables to get the layout working, which i would prefer not to do. Yes, CSS is a tragic accident when it comes to page layout. Why is vertically aligning a block element impossible without ugly hacks? Why are the kind of variable width layouts I'm talking about horribly difficult to get right? I used to be one of those CSS purists but after enough battles with CSS to do simple layouts, I have since become disillusioned about the value of CSS. Some day CSS will stop sucking for page layout. I certainly don't mean to say it's impossible to do arbitrarily complex layouts with CSS, but getting those layouts to work right on both Gecko and Trident (not to mention Opera and KHTML) is extremely time consuming when the same layout could be accomplished with a table that pretty much always Just Works with minimal fuss. This represents an enormous failure of CSS in the real world. > There is currently a turn toward this style of deliberate layout on a > lot of sites at the moment. The rule is generally if your left hand > menu fits in the height with the header then the site is working. you > shouldn't need to scroll for the menu. Yes, agreed, you should never have to scroll to access top-level navigational elements. > Agreed the colours are crap, this is intentional... I'm trying to > irritate people enough so that they start to suggest a reasonable > palette! ;) I'm gonna look at some paletting sites which are very > helpful as they generally have complimentary colour pickers. Cute strategy. :) Cheers, Jason.
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