Re: Determining Screen Resolution

POINT:

>>>>Don't you realize they could have a very good reason for
maximizing their browsing window even at large resolutions?<<<<

RESPONSE:

Excellent point...:).  The only two counter-responses I can think
of are a) "but we want it to look the same at all resolutions",
and b) "people don't know how to resize their browser"...

To which I'd respond:

a) It's not the nature of the beast.  This isn't TV, etc, etc.
Make your content available, but don't try to make it format
exactly the same on all browsers, resolutions, operating systems,
machines, and so on.  An uncontrollable urge to do so may mean the
person with that urge should be in print and not Web.

b) People will have to learn.  Sorry, but I don't completely buy
into the theory that we need to make sure *everything* is done for
the viewers.  Television viewers need to learn certain basic
skills to operate that machine, as do bicyclists and those who
wear shoes with laces.  Resizing a browser is a skill we can
reasonably expect from the viewer and one that is fairly simple to
master in all but possibly a few command-line environments.

Personally, I like the fact that I can resize a viewing area to
suit.  I am using 1024x768 right now and it took me all of a day
to get into the habit.  I'm not one to shunt the responsibility
for accessibility off onto my audience, but I do think we can go
too far in trying to do everything for them.

Our policy is to try to keep the lines of text contained as much
as possible within the parameters of the design and leave the
fine-tuning up to the user.

D


----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregor Pirnaver" <gregor.pirnaver(at)email.si>

On Wednesday 21 February 2001 09:07 Larry Coats wrote:
> Well, I can only repeat that percentage widths are great
> for fitting text onto smaller screens, but they don't
> work so well for larger screens. A width of, say, 90%,
> works very well at 640x480 or 800x600 on 15" monitors,
> but it's quite hard to read when sprawled out the 90%
> width of a 1280x1024 screen on a 21" monitor. What we
> need is percentage width combined with a max width (eg.,
> 90% width but no wider than 800 pixels). I believe that
> CSS-2 provides a max-width attribute for doing exactly
> this, but browser support isn't there yet.

Don't you realize they could have a very good reason for
maximizing their browsing window even at large resolutions?


--
Gregor @ Mandrake 7.2 -> KDE 2.0 -> Kmail 1.1.99 -> ;-)

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