peterinwa
11-10-2002, 04:59 PM
I first learned HTML, and a little JavaScript, on WebTV. When I saw the webpages I had created on a PC I was horrified at how different they looked. As a result, I began the process of always checking to see if the user was on WebTV or a PC, using Internet Explorer or Netscape, and 800 or 1024 screen resolution.
Then I would adjust the parameters of the page to make the image look the same. For example, a character size 3 at 1024 might become a 2 at 800.
This just seemed the natural thing to do to me and I couldn't figure out why other websites didn't do it. It also had a particular purpose in one case. One of my pages is a calculator (a form) where the user inputs data and the clicks on the Calculate button. If I hadn't reduced the character size for 800 screen resolution, the user would have had to scroll to use it which wouldn't have been very practical. Scrolling up and down and then back up for each calculation.
But now I'm looking at it in a different way. Except for a particular case, like the calculator, I'm thinking that if someone is using 800 it's because they WANT things to be bigger so they can read them more easily. So I'm defeating the purpose by making them smaller.
I'm just wondering if anyone else has given this so much thought -- or programmed to keep their pages looking the same at any screen reso.
Very much a self-taught novice, Peter
P.S.
One thing I do not like but see all the time is 800 wide page headers. Graphics, which I think look very poor viewed at 1024 with a lot of white space on the right side.
I center everything. For text, I make the width of the page 65% to 80% -- it's to hard to read very wide columns of text (that's why newspapers have narrow columns). And of course if it's set at 80%, that's 80% whether it's 800 or 1024.
Then I would adjust the parameters of the page to make the image look the same. For example, a character size 3 at 1024 might become a 2 at 800.
This just seemed the natural thing to do to me and I couldn't figure out why other websites didn't do it. It also had a particular purpose in one case. One of my pages is a calculator (a form) where the user inputs data and the clicks on the Calculate button. If I hadn't reduced the character size for 800 screen resolution, the user would have had to scroll to use it which wouldn't have been very practical. Scrolling up and down and then back up for each calculation.
But now I'm looking at it in a different way. Except for a particular case, like the calculator, I'm thinking that if someone is using 800 it's because they WANT things to be bigger so they can read them more easily. So I'm defeating the purpose by making them smaller.
I'm just wondering if anyone else has given this so much thought -- or programmed to keep their pages looking the same at any screen reso.
Very much a self-taught novice, Peter
P.S.
One thing I do not like but see all the time is 800 wide page headers. Graphics, which I think look very poor viewed at 1024 with a lot of white space on the right side.
I center everything. For text, I make the width of the page 65% to 80% -- it's to hard to read very wide columns of text (that's why newspapers have narrow columns). And of course if it's set at 80%, that's 80% whether it's 800 or 1024.