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Subject:Re: Web page displays and screen resolution From:"Jeanne A. E. DeVoto" <jaed -at- JAEDWORKS -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 8 Mar 1999 23:31:19 -0800
At 11:05 PM -0800 3/8/99, Debbie Pesach wrote:
>Since (I think) the issue is not screen size but screen resolution,
>could you brilliant denizens please give me a quick tutorial on what
>determines how web pages are displayed and what would be considered the
>best resolution to set the pages.
I'll give a simple answer: don't even try.
If you avoid abusing the table construct to hard-code a pixel width for a
page, the browser will flow the content to whatever the user's window size
may be. And since there is no way you can control or predict the window
size, it is never safe to try to impose a fixed pixel width. If the user's
window is larger than that width, you'll be wasting screen space (and
possibly causing an unrealistically short line length for text if the user
has chosen a large font size). If the window is narrower than your page's
width, the user must scroll horizontally, back and forth for each line of
text or chunk of information, which is even worse.
Many web designers who come from a print/graphic-design background want to
set a pixel width almost reflexively, because one of the first questions a
print designer asks is "What size paper do I have to work with?" But it's
an approach that doesn't carry over well to web design.
