Left-handed pages

[Mason A. Clark]

Can anyone comment on the frequency (prevalence?) of pages
that are stacked on the left?

I see it as a concession to 800x600 screens. OK. But is there
a way of using the full 1024x768 or larger screens without
forcing horizontal scrolling on smaller screens?

I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.

Mason C

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Mason A. Clark wrote:

Can anyone comment on the frequency (prevalence?) of pages that are
stacked on the left?

I see it as a concession to 800x600 screens. OK. But is there a
way of using the full 1024x768 or larger screens without forcing
horizontal scrolling on smaller screens?
It's called flexible design. Fluid layouts.

Like:
http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/webdev...s/spider1.html
I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.

Only when the developer doesn't know how to do fluid layout.

--
-bts
-This space intentionally left blank.

[Mason A. Clark]

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:13:06 GMT, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.*********@example.invalid> wrote:

Mason A. Clark wrote:

Can anyone comment on the frequency (prevalence?) of pages that are
stacked on the left?

I see it as a concession to 800x600 screens. OK. But is there a
way of using the full 1024x768 or larger screens without forcing
horizontal scrolling on smaller screens?

It's called flexible design. Fluid layouts.

Like:
http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/webdev...s/spider1.html

I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.

Only when the developer doesn't know how to do fluid layout.

I like your site and templates. Thanks.

My problem: the need to keep text narrow for readability but
place it aesthetically on the screen. This means *not* using
the full 1024 width. Instead text only 500 wide. It would be
nice to have it in the center.

Conflicting thinking he has. Head his not screwed right.

Mason C

[Els]

Mason A. Clark wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:13:06 GMT, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.*********@example.invalid> wrote:

Mason A. Clark wrote:

Can anyone comment on the frequency (prevalence?) of pages that are
stacked on the left?

I see it as a concession to 800x600 screens. OK. But is there a
way of using the full 1024x768 or larger screens without forcing
horizontal scrolling on smaller screens?

It's called flexible design. Fluid layouts.

Like:
http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/webdev...s/spider1.html

I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.

Only when the developer doesn't know how to do fluid layout.

I like your site and templates. Thanks.

My problem: the need to keep text narrow for readability but
place it aesthetically on the screen. This means *not* using
the full 1024 width. Instead text only 500 wide. It would be
nice to have it in the center.

Set a max-width in ems, not pixels. (You don't want to force someone
who needs very large fonts to have 3 words per line only)

Then center the page to avoid the stacking on the left.

--
Els http://locusmeus.com/
Sonhos vem. Sonhos vão. O resto é imperfeito.
- Renato Russo -

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Mason A. Clark wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:13:06 GMT, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.*********@example.invalid> wrote:

Like:
http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/webdev...s/spider1.html

I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.
Only when the developer doesn't know how to do fluid layout.

I like your site and templates. Thanks.

Credit where due: those are Ben Meadowcroft's templates, not mine.
My problem: the need to keep text narrow for readability but place
it aesthetically on the screen. This means *not* using the full
1024 width. Instead text only 500 wide. It would be nice to have
it in the center.
Then set an appropriate width in ems for a column. Or max-width as Els
suggested (not supported in the Microsoft browser component). Here is
a page of mine that illustrates max-width, and how IE overlooks it:
http://home.rochester.rr.com/bshagnasty/tips.html

But, you just complained of too much unused space in larger monitors.
Now you want to restrict the width of the page?
Conflicting thinking he has. Head his not screwed right.

Ah. Yes...

--
-bts
-This space intentionally left blank.

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, Mason A. Clark wrote:

the full 1024 width. Instead text only 500 wide.
500 what? The only meaningful unit for sizing text in a generic web
context is the em unit. CSS size specifications are in general
invalid (and required to be ignored by a properly-behaved client
agent) in the absence of a proper unit specification. Any client
agent which guesses what unit was intended is in a state of sin (MS
failed to learn this lesson from their CSS disaster in IE3, but this
is only one instance of their disregard for interworking
specifications).
It would be nice to have it in the center.

It depends. Speaking in general terms, without reference to any
specific design that you might have in mind, it could be nice (if
there's space available) to float some other part of the content into
any remaining space. It's nasty, on the other hand, to *force* some
other part of the content alongside (as so many present-day pages do)
without having any idea of the width of the readers' various viewport
sizes, and risking left/right scrolling - something which users report
to be extremely irksome.

[Gus Richter]

Mason A. Clark wrote:

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 23:13:06 GMT, "Beauregard T. Shagnasty"
<a.*********@example.invalid> wrote:

Mason A. Clark wrote:

Can anyone comment on the frequency (prevalence?) of pages that are
stacked on the left?

I see it as a concession to 800x600 screens. OK. But is there a
way of using the full 1024x768 or larger screens without forcing
horizontal scrolling on smaller screens?

It's called flexible design. Fluid layouts.

Like:
http://www.benmeadowcroft.com/webdev...s/spider1.html

I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.

Only when the developer doesn't know how to do fluid layout.

I like your site and templates. Thanks.

Just because a thing is published on the web, don't accept it at face
value. For example, the "prosandcons1" and "prosandcons2" templates are
great at 1024x768, but run off the left and right side of the screen at
800x600.

--
Gus

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Gus Richter wrote:

Just because a thing is published on the web, don't accept it at
face value. For example, the "prosandcons1" and "prosandcons2"
templates are great at 1024x768, but run off the left and right
side of the screen at 800x600.

Looks like those two pages need some adjustments to the margins and
padding. He has a strange -90px margin in there as well.

The two- and three-column pages work well, though.

--
-bts
-This space intentionally left blank.

[Keith Baird]

Mason A. Clark <ma*************@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

Can anyone comment on the frequency (prevalence?) of pages
that are stacked on the left?
I see it as a concession to 800x600 screens. OK. But is there
a way of using the full 1024x768 or larger screens without
forcing horizontal scrolling on smaller screens?
I'm seeing 17" monitors going to waste.

I'd say the "stacked left" tendency of most sites is a concession to
users whose browser window is not opened to the full screen width,
rather then monitor size/resolution.

Your complaint assumes window size equals (or should equal) the full
size of the users screen. I *never* do that, can't imagine why anyone
would, and deeply resent the occasional site I visit that employs some
script or other to resize my window.

Aside from typically having multiple windows and multiple applications
open simultaneously, a Web page open to full screen width usually
results in text lines much too long to read with comfort. (Mine is
1280x854, but the principle holds even for 800x600 depending on the
user's preferred onscreen text size.)

--/<eith