Thread: Page width - resolution

Hello to all!

I know there is some controversy about this subject (I'm still a staff sereant, although I've read, I believe, thousands of posts), but I feel I need to bring it up once again. Please feel free to call me stupid, but I feel strongly about this, unless proven wrong!


I have been building my site on a laptop, with a widescreen res. @ 1280X800. For the first time, today, I viewed a page on another monitor, same res., w/o widescreen, and I see the difference. What I can't understand is why anyone in the year 2007, is still viewing anything @ 800x600? I change to this res. and I half expect to see Bill Gates flossing his braces! It's like a portal to the 1980's for myopic geeks!

I am working on changing my pages to top out at maybe 900 wide, and in a way (less space to fill!) it's easier. I just feel there must be 2-5% of people out there who just need to upgrade, but are stuck in the past, thus keeping the rest of us corraled in their little world. Do we, in the here and now, coddle to that 2-5%, or can we assume they will soon be buried along with their dinosaurs, and format our sites for the future.

I just felt the "need to put it out there", With hope, I am within a week or two of publishing, and I don't feel I need to be resizing forever for a few who still think "this computer thing is just a fad"!

Sincerely,

Mike

Please note that this has been many times been discussed. The conclusion of these discussions is that many build their sites to a approx. 950 - 1000 px width.

I personally like having always my left side Favourites menu open, and this reduces my usefull screen (a 1400 width) to something like 1050 - 1100. I suppose that i am not the only one.

Hi Mike, sorry if i read it wrong? But are you getting mixed up with page width & resolution. As there are many very big names out there that still have there pages at 800 wide. Or have i read this wrong. lol

I understand your need to repeat this discussion, I am guessing that you have made this site in the larger width and don't want to redo it which I can fully understand. Having said that though, although I may agree with you unfortunately you are best advised to keep the sites to a width of 800 to 1000 max. (Ideally 800)

That's my opinion.

Originally Posted by mwalsh62

Hello to all!

I know there is some controversy about this subject (I'm still a staff sereant, although I've read, I believe, thousands of posts), but I feel I need to bring it up once again. Please feel free to call me stupid, but I feel strongly about this, unless proven wrong!


I have been building my site on a laptop, with a widescreen res. @ 1280X800. For the first time, today, I viewed a page on another monitor, same res., w/o widescreen, and I see the difference. What I can't understand is why anyone in the year 2007, is still viewing anything @ 800x600? I change to this res. and I half expect to see Bill Gates flossing his braces! It's like a portal to the 1980's for myopic geeks!

I am working on changing my pages to top out at maybe 900 wide, and in a way (less space to fill!) it's easier. I just feel there must be 2-5% of people out there who just need to upgrade, but are stuck in the past, thus keeping the rest of us corraled in their little world. Do we, in the here and now, coddle to that 2-5%, or can we assume they will soon be buried along with their dinosaurs, and format our sites for the future.

I just felt the "need to put it out there", With hope, I am within a week or two of publishing, and I don't feel I need to be resizing forever for a few who still think "this computer thing is just a fad"!

Sincerely,

Mike

You know, Mike, in the end the width to which you build your website is built is a matter of personal choice, as is the design of your whole site.
If you choose to classify anyone using an older computer as those 'who will be buried with the dinasour', again, your choice.
Personally, I choose to build sites to be easily viewed by the greatest number of viewers, so I will build to 800, regardless of my own personal technological preferences.

I think you need to consider your customer base, and if you are certain they are largely people who are computer savvy, you go, man, build wide as you wish.
But you might want to realize that the baby boomers who are now moving into geezerhood have tons of $ of disposable income, and may not be as advanced in their tech skills or equipment as you would like.

And that is my 2 cents worth.
Regards,

A few months back if I remember correctly there were about 20% viewers in 800 and below .. so I guess to satisfy everyone right now that's what you do, ... I believe Bethers builds at 1000 but keeps the main content of her site within the 800 range ... and then if you have a look at Bills new site Bill2006 in customer reviews, he has his background that looks like a template, which goes across the entire screen for everyone and content in the middle (800) I think, but it gives the appearance of filling the entire screen, I really like those backgrounds that do that .. I believe Vasili has a site that does the same ... nice!

I suppose I am confused, and looking for clarification. I originally made my pages with a page width of 1024, and my content at 1000, that from the forums I understood to be rebellious at best.

Then, after viewing elsewhere, I feel some sympathy with others viewing elsewise. Can you explain the difference in width vs, resolution for the layman? and how do I (and any who come after me) make the compromise between the past and the future?

I really don't mean to be a pain in the a$%, but some things aren't readily clear.

Thanks,
Mike

By the bye and bye, I'm turning 45 on Wed., so while no spring chick myself, I do try to stay up-to-date!

GO BABY BOOMERS!

Time for bed on this side of the pond. But will come back with some more on the topic.
PS.
VH has only got a page width of about 720. lol

Chris, thank you for that cryptic good night! talk to you in the a.m.!

To everyone else kind enough to reply, I really am just looking for answers, and in the last months have asked few questions, for I am reading posts, oh so many posts, and have found most every answer I have needed. Sometimes only a matter of whether the question is phrased properly or not is the difference between enlightenment or total befuddlement. Nothing can replace experience and patience, both of which abound in these forums! I do not mean to criticize, for I have learned much, but once in awhile questions do need to be posed afresh, hopefully to elicit the answer lost the first time.

Thank you,

Mike

Mike, resolution is refered to the number of pixels that form your screen. the page width iis the number of pixels used by you for your pages . As you understand, if a view a site page that is 800 px wide, in a 800x600 resolution, it will cover the entire screen, whilst if i view it in a 1960 px resolution it will cover less than half.

If i view the same page, in the same monitor, but with two different settings (first set at 800x600 then at 1400x960) in the first case characters (and the entire page) will seem huge, in the second case normal. As you understand, it also depends on the choices (for font and other elements size) the user has made during site building.
To have a page that goes well for most users, i would suggest that nt only you go for a width between 800 and 1000, but you also use a resolution of at least 1024 x 768 during sitebuilding.

With LCD monitors, the usuall resolution is from 1024x768 to 1400X... or 1600X px, so a webpage built at 1000 px is good enough.

LOL! Naval was up early with an exelent reply. The wiki gives some good info as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution.

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.Margaret Fuller
US Transcendentalist author & editor (1810 - 1850)

Thanks for the light!

Mike

Originally Posted by navaldesign

Please note that this has been many times been discussed. The conclusion of these discussions is that many build their sites to a approx. 950 - 1000 px width.

I personally like having always my left side Favourites menu open, and this reduces my usefull screen (a 1400 width) to something like 1050 - 1100. I suppose that i am not the only one.

Hi there;We also have a page-width problem:Our width is 1200 and hight is 800.On our own (wide) screen the image is great,but when we are on another computer and another browser with a normal(small)screen,we have to scroll from left to right and from top to bottom to see all.(the site isn't automatically adjusted by the other browser).I know that in html-language you can use the tag <pre> for using pre formatted text,but we didn't use that tag at all and still our page isn't automatically adjusted.
When we adjust the width to about 800,people with wide screens see blank space at the left and right,which isn't that nice.Isn't there some kind of trick to let other browsers automatically adjust our site to their screens??
Many thanks for your help,
Igor

Hi Igor ... no there isn't a trick, but you can insert a background color, right click on your page, select properties, choose color and then tick center in browser also ... this will center your page for all viewers and if you stick to '800 wide - no scrolling for anyone ...

Some people build their pages at '1000 wide using borders and edges but keep their main content within the '800 mark and then this widens your page for those viewers with larger or wide screens ...

I've seen a few uses of backgrounds that when applied as a background on page properties, even look like page templates, then the content is placed in the '800 mark and your site looks like it fills the entire screen on all pages, Bill2006 and Vasili each use one on one of their sites. I like this look ...

Hi,

Dell in their latest offerings are promoting 19" LCD,s their smallest range for Pc's are now 17". To me 15" monitors are all antiques and can be found in large multi national corps where all they view are alphabets and numbers. The Managers and Bosses would have 19" to 14" Lcd screens to view charts and graphs. Then theres the Yuppies who move about with their 12" screen Laptop which are getting wider but has a limitation not to go further than 12 1/2 ". Along came **** with their **** trying to reduce the laptop smaller and smaller, the *** oh so small and the cellphone smaller still but the consolation is that home PCs are getting cheaper and cheaper and the monitors are changing to LCD screens which are growing larger and larger!

So which viewers are you going for?

When U surf you will find that a lot of sites are going wide [1200] and they are running out of space so they try to cramm in as much as possible so the fonts becomes smaller and tinyer and finally almost unreadable so they have lost millions of viewer with poor eyesights and on and on and...........

So my guess is "To each his/her own" do what U think is best for your site and dont be guided by others for if your site fails, you can blame yourself.

Dont put yourself in a position where you compromise your design freedom in favour of size limitations because that is what everybody says it should be.

Be Guided by what others say and do ,but the final decision is yours make or break.

I have decided to compromise, I am going to start with 800 wide, and since the layout of my site will be morphing from time to time anyway, I may go larger as time goes on. If (???) anyone actually visits, perhaps I may get feedback and base future on those demographics.

Thanks for all advice,

Mike

P.S. My threads are disappearing from my view, if anyone can explain (am I "persona non grata"), please email me at mwalsh62@msn.com.

Originally Posted by mwalsh62

I have decided to compromise, I am going to start with 800 wide, and since the layout of my site will be morphing from time to time anyway, I may go larger as time goes on. If (???) anyone actually visits, perhaps I may get feedback and base future on those demographics.

Thanks for all advice,

Mike

P.S. My threads are disappearing from my view, if anyone can explain (am I "persona non gratis"), please email me at mwalsh62@msn.com.

Good decision I think, Mike.
Re your threads disappearing - sometimes that happens if threads are duplicated, and sometimes they are moved to more appropriate rooms, and sometimes they just disappear into the ether..
You can check by checking in your user control panel and looking at all of your threads..
Happens to me sometimes, too, go figure..

Originally Posted by LadyEye

Hi Igor ... no there isn't a trick, but you can insert a background color, right click on your page, select properties, choose color and then tick center in browser also ... this will center your page for all viewers and if you stick to '800 wide - no scrolling for anyone ...

Some people build their pages at '1000 wide using borders and edges but keep their main content within the '800 mark and then this widens your page for those viewers with larger or wide screens ...

I've seen a few uses of backgrounds that when applied as a background on page properties, even look like page templates, then the content is placed in the '800 mark and your site looks like it fills the entire screen on all pages, Bill2006 and Vasili each use one on one of their sites. I like this look ...

Okay,seems pretty logic.We will try it out,thanks for your advise!!
greetings Igor