Re: avoiding horizontal scrolling

At 14:58 17/07/02 +0100, mr ian scott ferguson wrote:
>Can anyone tell me what I need to do in order to ensure that the Web pages
>I'm working on are not forced to horizontal scrolling, including when the
>screen resolution is set to 640 x 480.

There are four things[1] that can make a window scroll horizontally:

         o Wide graphics
         o Fixed width tables
         o Tables that contain wide graphics or other content that makes 
them `wide'
         o Using absolutely positioned elements that are positioned off the 
edge of the screen

You can ignore the fourth, as you are unlikely to do that by accident.

You can avoid the second simply by never setting a width in pixels for tables.

Avoiding the first and the third is more difficult to describe, but 
actually much easier to do. By experimenting with different window sizes 
and different graphics you will get a feel for how wide you can make 
graphics without horizontal scrolling. I'd usually guess at something like 
max total horizontal width <= window size - 40px.

And remember that horizontal scrolling is caused by content being wider 
that the _window_ not the screen :-)

Andrew
-- 
http://aamcf.co.uk/

[1] Well, two common things. I could probably come up with some bizarre 
ones if I tried.

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