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Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:31 pm
by ckh
superdezign wrote:Well what about "newbies" to a graphic artists site? Traffic is traffic.

That's the only reason W3C talks about accessibility; It's like displaying a really nice website for Firefox users, and then just displaying the phrase "Get Firefox" on your page for IE users.

... Okay, not quite THAT brutal, but you get the point.
It was just an example. If you are targeting graphic artists, then design accordingly. Maybe your selling some expensive plug-in so you gear your site toward the people you want to market to. Traffic is NOT just traffic. If my 90 year old grandmother happened to find the link through Google, well, she wouldn't be the person I was targeting to so I really wouldn't care if it displayed correctly on her monitor or not.

It would be similar to constructing a restaurant. If it's going to be a 5 star restaurant, are you going to build it like a McDonalds with a drive through window? I mean traffic is traffic..... :wink:

Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 10:22 pm
by superdezign
Lmao. :lol: Okay, so yeah, maybe you're right. But still, what if the graphic designers are logging on from school? What then? DOM percentages :-D

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:28 am
by matthijs
These aren't easy discussions as there are so many factors involved. It's impossible to generalize and say "it's time for 1024".

One thing which hasn't been mentioned is that if you make a 1024px website, that doesn't mean it is NOT accessible to someone using 800x600. It only means he will get a horizontal scrollbar. Just as he (probably) has a vertical scrollbar.

Is that a bad thing? That depends. If he needs to scroll both horizontally and vertically to be able to read some content, yes it is a lot less usable. (however if you have line-lengts of 1024px long you probably have another problem).

However, if you make a 3 column site with the third column full of advertisements, that person might be thankful you designed for 1024px because now he doesn't have this irritating blinking add in the corner of his eye the whole time.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:41 am
by nickvd
Oren wrote:onion2k and nickvd, don't get mad, but what you said is a complete nonsense. Since lack of time and since I don't won't to argue about such simple and fundamental thing, I'm not going to get into a debate... Just read a little bit more usability & accessibility articles :wink:
Not mad at all, everyone is entitled to their opinions, even if I didn't give it to them ;)

I always put usability and accessibility first and foremost, and rarely have I designed a site that had horizontal scrolling at 800x600 (I can only think of 3 or 4 out of well over 30), I've always avoided it like the plague (and hated every minute of it).

However, when it comes to pleasing the client, it's not always that simple. Face it, at the root of it all, they want their site to look good on their screens, they rarely care (or even know) the problem(s) us designers face. So if they want their site to stretch the whole screen (or most of it) and they run at 1024, then what choice do we have? We could make it fit in 800x600 (760ish max width) and center it. They may or may not be happy with the larger gap on the sides. The problem is even bigger if they use a larger resolution.

Sure, we can use a fluid layout, but not all designs lend themselves to fluidity.

It's only since I noticed yahoo going for a fixed layout larger than 800 wide have I started to rethink things. What demographic tends to use yahoo? ...well I don't have research, but I'm sure it's pretty much any and every type of person (old, young, morons, geniuses, etc...). So if yahoo, with their sizable user base is willing to stop designing for 800x600, what more can I say?

I'd like to refer to my first paragraph, so I can reiterate my support, and adherence to the standards, accessibility, et al. :)

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 3:03 am
by Oren
nickvd wrote:So if they want their site to stretch the whole screen (or most of it) and they run at 1024, then what choice do we have?
That's what I was telling you, you can have both - a site that will take the whole screen in 1024x768 and the whole screen in 800x600, but in larger resolutions it won't go beyond the max-width. Check the link in my first post in this topic :wink:

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 5:08 am
by Ree
I must say I do not care about 800x600'ers anymore. If they're using this, they can as well use the horizontal scrollbar then. Actually I can't really imagine anyone using 800x600 on their PC... Just what's the point? You can't see anything in that little space.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 6:28 am
by matthijs
Ree wrote:I must say I do not care about 800x600'ers anymore. If they're using this, they can as well use the horizontal scrollbar then. Actually I can't really imagine anyone using 800x600 on their PC... Just what's the point? You can't see anything in that little space.
Well, the point is that some people do still have 800x600. Some because their monitor is not that big, some have 800x600 and don't know that they can change the resolution and others prefer the bigger letters of 800x600 (because all those nice web developers decided to design their site with arial 10px). If these users happen to be in your target audience (for many sites they are) it's kind of rude and stupid not to think about them.

I have been using more flexible layouts myself (min-/max-width) lately because of the wide range of screen resolutions people use. Not only are there more people using 1280+, many people, like 5-20%, still have 800-600 (again, highly dependent on your audience).

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:18 am
by onion2k
People need to remember that while someone might be using 1024 or 1280 or whatever they don't necessarily run their browser maximised. The whole issue isn't so much what resolution they're using as it is what their browser's width is. The assumption that noone uses 800*600 any more could be true. That doesn't mean everyone's browser is at least 1024 wide.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:04 am
by pickle
I don't design for any resolution (though my sites to generally tend to start getting distorted at ~500px). My personal gut reaction is that its a cop-out to not have a fluid design, so I try to stick with that. Sure it might be easier to make a pixel perfect site with a static width, but if I'm viewing a site & 1/3 to 1/2 of my screen width is whitespace - I feel kind of cheated ;)

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:23 am
by matthijs
pickle wrote:but if I'm viewing a site & 1/3 to 1/2 of my screen width is whitespace - I feel kind of cheated ;)
Oops, that might have been one of my sites! Sorry about that. But I have sold a lot of whitespace to clients lately (Now! With even more whitespace! 20% discount! Last 800px wide site with at least 600px white for only 499!)

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 11:02 am
by onion2k
Oren wrote:onion2k and nickvd, don't get mad, but what you said is a complete nonsense. Since lack of time and since I don't won't to argue about such simple and fundamental thing, I'm not going to get into a debate... Just read a little bit more usability & accessibility articles :wink:
You're wrong.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:31 pm
by AKA Panama Jack
Personally, I don't like small fixed width sites. I prefer the dynamic width sites that change depending upon the width of the browser screen.

With that said...

Yes, my ADOdb Lite and Template Lite site are sized for 800 width. That is because at the time I needed something quick and dirty. So I used a couple of pre-made templates. That's about the only reason I would use a width of 800 for any web site. I keep meaning to go back and make them dynamic width but just never have the time. :(

I wish more template designers would STOP creating fixed width templates and create more dynamic width. This will cater to people wanting to use different browser window sizes. I always use a full screen for browsing (1280 x 1024) because I like to see MORE of the site content without having to scroll.

We tracked the width used by browsers accessing one of our sites for over a year and found that the majority of people accessing were using over 1000 pixels for the width. We were tracking the size of the browser window and not the screen resolution of the computer. The people using 800 or less was less than half the people using 1000 or higher. We stopped tracking this information over a year ago so I would imagine the number of people using 1000 and higher has risen.

Since people have been switching to LCD monitors and the native resolution is 1280x1024 on most of them people are using larger browser windows. Using 800 fixed width web pages just makes them look... well... unfinished when viewed on 1280x1024 resolutions. You have huge empty space on either side if the content is centered. If the content is left justified you have what looks to be a huge empty space on the right side that looks like it could have another web page placed in it.

Everyone should think about using dynamic width web pages. You can create them easily using DIV tags and CSS. There are examples all over the web on how to do it with 1, 2, 3, etc columns and many other formats.

Just say "NO to fixed width Web Sites.". :)

Now all I need to do is take the time to fix my two personal web sites. ;)

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:44 pm
by Luke
This conversation has been had several times already on these forums... I do not agree with "
Just say "NO to fixed width Web Sites."" simply because websites with little to no textual content have no way to justify a fluid layout. I think it's ridiculous to even say they do. A website with no content will look ridiculous with a fluid layout.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 1:55 pm
by Shaneckel
The time will come, just as designing for 640' was once the standard. I have a strong feeling 1024 will be the the new standard size after Vista is popular. As for now, The market still calls for 800. This falls in the same area as 56k verse cable.

Work with percentages and patterns, that way it looks the same in every resolution.

Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2007 2:27 pm
by nickvd
pickle wrote:My personal gut reaction is that its a cop-out to not have a fluid design, so I try to stick with that.
Not true at all. It HIGHLY depends on the design of the site. http://www.clanci.net for example, cannot have a fluid layout without massive alterations to the design. Clients would refuse the extra cost, or their designers would refuse to make the changes.

I'm a HUGE proponent of fluid designs, but in the end, it's the client that makes the choice.