Re: Browser maximum WIDTH & HEIGHT!

Carl Beeth writes:

> [someone said]: 
> >Well the WIDTH and HEIGHT could be percentages of the "main" browser.
> >Or then we can look up all the currently used screen modes, and the
> >author of the page could determine.  In PC:s there are just a few
> >(640*480), (800*600), (1024*768) and (1280*1024).
> 
> This is something I (and most designers I know) have been struggling with
> for quite some time now.
> 
> The way I am working now is to use tables to force my layout to fit
> approximately 480 Pixels. This is not a very elegant solution but it works.

Depends what you mean by works. A page that des not respond sensibly to my 
resizing the window is not working very well, I would say.


> 4) most screens are around 72 pixels/inch so my page will fit with out
> reduction when printed.

Screens I have access to in this building vary from 53 dpi to 111 dpi.

> 5) most advertising banners are 460-480, I guess they have at least put
> some thought in to it.

Making it likely that the full width of a graphic can be seen does not 
equate to forcing the document to be that width.

> the above are opinions that are not set in stone, in fact, I am still
> trying to figure out what width to design on.

A variable one.  Seriously.  This is a new medium - design *for* it's
features, not *around* them.

Imagine someone producing a propotional video or a TV advert.  They try
desperately hard to apply all they learned in design school about laying
out the printed page - which doesn't work - and they forget to add a
soundtrack rather than having lots of text on the screen. They make little 
if any use of animation and what there is is jerky. Would that be good design?

Many designers of Web pages seem to be doing precisely that - trying
very hard to make a Web page into a piece of paper, and delivering
pictures of pages.


> All this to say I would love a tag to control the width of a window.

Ah but that is inconsistent, because you also said:

> (I have a 1280*1024
> and have often several browser windows open side by side or windows from
> other programs that I want to see at the same time I am browsing, such as
> BBedit if I am designing).

So you like to control the width of your browser window.  So do I.  I
might have the browser full width - and like you I have a 1280x1024
screen - then again I often have a 300x1024 window to read stuff in
whilst using other larger, more important windows.

What will you say when the tag you asked for is used to make a page 800
pixels wide but you wanted it alongside another window?

-- 
Chris Lilley, Technical Author and JISC representative to W3C 
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Received on Wednesday, 20 March 1996 14:00:15 UTC