At 08:49 AM 7/30/2006, Tina wrote:
My question is this - the design that I am working on has carried to
a fixed width of 900px for the page. Now I do know that this won't
display correctly at 800x600 because of the width - but is this
really something I should worry about? Most new computers are set at
least 1024x768 out of the box, and I believe that the majority of my
target audience will be on these settings as well.
Tina,
You can't limit or predict the resizing of browser text by the
user. If your text blocks are sized in pixels and the user zooms
their text in or out, your beautifully-crafted layout is very quickly
going to break, get ugly, or become difficult to read.
Neither can you limit or predict browser window size, regardless of
monitor resolution. Not every PC user maximizes windows, and I've
rarely seen a Mac user do so. Requiring people to maximize their
windows goes way beyond the mandate of the web designer. Personally
I think it's reasonable to assume some minimum window width in order
to accommodate fixed-width content such as images, and I think it's
reasonable to aim for a minimum window size based on your
understanding of market share: almost no one will expect you to
support 640x480, and some developers have already turned their backs
on those still using 800x600 (including a lot of people using older
and hand-me-down computers in the world's poorer neighborhoods).
You'd go crazy if you tried to accommodate literally everyone, but
fortunately today's technology enables us to accommodate an enormous
majority with only minor medication & counselling required.
I suggest a flexible dimensioning algorithm that uses relative
measurements whenever possible:
- Design your page to fit in your most narrow target window width
when text zoom is set to normal. I'll often mandate the Windows
default font size of 16px in all browsers; then 800px / 16px =
50em. I usually reduce that to 48em to accommodate the width of the
vertical scroll bar.
- Set your column widths in ems so they zoom in proportion to text size.
- Give a minimum pixel width to columns containing fixed-width images.
- Don't give any column of text a width greater than 30 or 40em for
the sake of line-length readability.
- Limit your content width to 100% of window width to prevent
horizontal scrolling.
(Or should we leave this up to the individual and not try to
protect them from themselves?)
If you haven't yet, check out the CSS-D wiki for tips, techniques,
and great links: http://css-discuss.incutio.com/
Paul
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