Suz wrote:
> Thanks for the info George. Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to what
> those 40% of "don't knows" are set to? Is there a normal DEFAULT size for
> PCs? Is it safe to assume that if they don't know what size they're on,
> then they're on 640x480?
I would say that is a safe assumption. If they don't know, then they
probably have it set the way it came when they bought it, which is often
640x480 x 256 colors, even if the card in their machine can run at much
higher resolutions and color depths. I've made a few customers quite happy
when I changed their settings and "suddenly pictures looked much clearer"
and they could "fit more stuff on the screen".
> Are most designers still assuming that most users will be on 640 x480? The
> other day a prospective client sent me to see two sites that he liked,
> microsoft.com and intel.com, and I immediately noticed that both of these
> sites spilled over the edge when viewed on my #2 monitor, 14
> incher set to
> 640x480. I suppose it might be safe to assume that a large proportion of
> Intel and Microsoft visitors might be "experts," but who knows?
Well, it may be safe to assume that Intel and MS know. If not, they ought to
have a little talk with their site designers ;P I remember looking at the MS
site about 6 months ago and thinking that it would only really be practical
to view at at least 800 x600, due to the massive frames they used, but
they've toned that down a bit. I wondered at the time if they were just
trying to manipulate the market somehow: build it so it doesn't work right
at 640x480, then everyone who wants to use the site will finally figure out
how to change their settings. I noticed on the MSNBC site recently that they
are using some DHTML to draw things on the page that only get drawn when the
browser window is wider than x pixels, which is pretty clever, but only
works in MSIE 4.
The real case for narrow design is the narrow Mac default browser window
size. Now that's really narrow, something like 520-540. I try to design all
the stuff in my sites so it will compress down to around that width, but it
can definitely be a challenge. I have noticed that many sites with high
traffic have settled on around a 600 wide layout. I have also noticed that
some popular sites that used to use fixed-width tables are redesigning using
percentages (but probably more sites are going the other direction - toward
fixed width tables).
> The clients, being artists and producers, have large screens, so if we
> design for small screens, then our pages are going to look dinky on their
> monitors. If we ask them to change their PC's screen resolution to 640x480
> so they can see their site as most users will see it, can they
> change their
> resolution on the fly , or will they have to restart?
First off, your client should be more concerned with their customers than
the way it looks on their monster monitor. They should understand from the
get-go that you will be designing for maximum audience appreciation. I would
think smart folks like them could understand that most people will not be
looking at the site on 21 inch screens with 24 bit color depth. For testing
and viewing on their machines, you could either change the settings on the
fly, which will work with most recent model vid cards or draw an image that
they can use to resize their window against. For example, open a blank 1024
x 800 image in photoshop. Draw a 800 x 600 rectangle in it, in a different
color than the background, then draw another 640 x 480 rectangle that shares
the same upper left-hand corner. Save the image as a bmp file and install it
as the "background" image on the desktop. Then, resize your floating window
to fit the rectangles. This will give them an idea of the way the site will
appear at different browser sizes. The only difference will be that all the
pixels will be the same size. If that is an issue, then they can change
their video settings (as mentioned above).
I often keep a sample screen size image open in photoshop when I'm laying
out interfaces. I then dump the interface into an html page, put the browser
on top of photoshop and resize the browser window to fit the sample screen
size I am interested in. That way I can keep my "Windows background" a nice
puce color, with a picture of Crusty the Clown in the middle. By the way,
what ever happened to Crusty? Haven't seen him lately.
Jack
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