screen resolution solutions

Scripsit Ben C:

Why was a URL necessary? Salmobytes was asking if anyone knew of any
major or well-done sites that switch between alternative fixed-width
layouts. I don't see how that question would be better illustrated
with the help of a URL.

If it had been a serious question, surely he or she would have told the
reasons and illustrated it with the URL of his or her current design,
demonstrating how it fails to work at different resolutions.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On 2008-01-18, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

Scripsit Ben C:

Why was a URL necessary? Salmobytes was asking if anyone knew of any
major or well-done sites that switch between alternative fixed-width
layouts. I don't see how that question would be better illustrated
with the help of a URL.

If it had been a serious question, surely he or she would have told the
reasons and illustrated it with the URL of his or her current design,
demonstrating how it fails to work at different resolutions.

Rubbish. He or she might not even have a current design. It's still a
perfectly reasonable question without a URL.

someone said: something about "not serious"
and "why no url"

General case discussion section:
Hans Weilenmann has a nice site where he displays the best
sharp-focus, high-detail close-up photos (of trout flies)
on the net. But because 60% of all users view from 17"
monitors at 768 pixels wide, he has to keep the images small.
On his site you can click any individual image in order
to see a larger version, but that is a giant annoyance to
the ever-growing segment of power users who have 1024 pixels wide
or better.

A better (more intelligent) web-solution would provide some kind
of a mode-toggle switch on each page, where the user could
(in effect) click once to set a session parameter, and a cookie,
for future visits, and see the high resolution images without
clicking twice a thousand times over. Not providing that level
of user-customization is an unnecessary and annoying compromise.

Specific Url:
This (the following) is a development site a few weeks old.
It's no where near finished.
It won't be viewable at that address for more
than two or three days from today (Jan 18, 2008)
I can probably figure out how to tweak various font-size
parameters to make the text pages show up well enough
at 768 pixels wide, but I'm still stuck with showing
small images, in order to accommodate all users with
one-size-fits-all images. That's one reason why I started
thinking about dynamic css.
http://wage.cns.montana.edu

Juvenile flame trolling section:
I could play this game too. But I'll pass for now.
But I'm good at it, when I have to be.

salmobytes wrote:

someone said: something about "not serious"
and "why no url"

General case discussion section:
Hans Weilenmann has a nice site where he displays the best
sharp-focus, high-detail close-up photos (of trout flies)
on the net. But because 60% of all users view from 17"
monitors at 768 pixels wide, he has to keep the images small.
On his site you can click any individual image in order
to see a larger version, but that is a giant annoyance to
the ever-growing segment of power users who have 1024 pixels wide
or better.

A better (more intelligent) web-solution would provide some kind
of a mode-toggle switch on each page, where the user could
(in effect) click once to set a session parameter, and a cookie,
for future visits, and see the high resolution images without
clicking twice a thousand times over. Not providing that level
of user-customization is an unnecessary and annoying compromise.

There's nothing wrong with that, but the resolution of the user's screen
is only one factor in the user's preference in that case. Likewise, I
can set up my e-mail clients to display a preview pane or not, and I can
configure my text editor to show tabs at the top or bottom for
navigating among my open documents, or I can have a list of them open in
a pane at the left or right side, or both.

Whatever you do, don't assume that the user, especially the one with
high resolution and a big screen, wants to have his browser covering his
entire viewport. There's a reason why modern computer UIs allow multiple
windows to be open at the same time.

In article
<0f6ea2fb-d839-4c31-b54d-1a4d18201af5 (AT) s8g2000prg (DOT) googlegroups.com

,
salmobytes <Sandy.Pittendrigh (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

That's one reason why I started
thinking about dynamic css.
http://wage.cns.montana.edu

This breaks horribly. I think you should not think any more for a
while about anything dynamic. Calm right down and be happier with
less. Your users will thank you.

--
dorayme

Scripsit salmobytes:

someone said: something about "not serious"
and "why no url"

Forged quotations are revealing.

On his site you can click any individual image in order
to see a larger version,

Fine. That's what authors generally do.

A better (more intelligent) web-solution would provide some kind
of a mode-toggle switch on each page,

And you expect to do this in CSS? Consider reading an introductory
tutorial on the elements of basics of getting started with WWW
authoring.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

On 18 Jan, 22:12, salmobytes <Sandy.Pittendr... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Hans Weilenmann has a nice site where he displays the best
sharp-focus, high-detail close-up photos (of trout flies)

URL? It's not obviously Googleable (HW is evidently well known for
his work, but less so for his own site)

But because 60% of all users view from 17"
monitors at 768 pixels wide,

It's several years since that has been even approximately true.

power users who have 1024 pixels wide or better.

These days it's hard to find a non-power user who doesn't have at
least that resolution even vertically.

A better (more intelligent) web-solution would provide some kind
of a mode-toggle switch on each page,

No, this is terrible. Long experience of it for years now has taught
us this.

That's one reason why I started
thinking about dynamic css.
http://wage.cns.montana.edu

That's a ghastly page. It's particularly bad on a FF window under
890px wide.

On Jan 19, 1:53 am, "Jukka K. Korpela" <jkorp... (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> wrote:

And you expect to do this in CSS? Consider reading an introductory
tutorial on the elements of basics of getting started with WWW
authoring.

No, you can't swap images with css.
But if you were swapping image sizes, based on a mode switch,
you would also have an opportunity to change the css too,
so it was custom tailored for low resolution or high resolution.

Yahoo (as someone else pointed out) does this. I will give it a try.
You seem to be a pigeon-hole thinker. Cs attracts lots of those,
for some reason. Even in Finland, apparently.

On Jan 21, 2:49 am, Andy Dingley <ding... (AT) codesmiths (DOT) com> wrote:

Hans Weilenmann has a nice site where he displays the best
sharp-focus, high-detail close-up photos (of trout flies)

URL? It's not obviously Googleable (HW is evidently well known for
his work, but less so for his own site)
http://www.danica.com/flytier/

Hans' "large" images are only 600 pixels wide--he's trying to
accomodate everybody.
Closeup images of flies look a heck of a lot better at 700 pixels
wide.
On high resolution monitors with high-speed connections, 800 pixels
is spectacular, by comparison. Trying to serve everybody all at once
with 600 pixels wide is an annoying compromise.

But because 60% of all users view from 17"
monitors at 768 pixels wide,

It's several years since that has been even approximately true.

Not according to w3c They currently show 54%

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

That's a ghastly page. It's particularly bad on a FF window under
890px wide.

Yes indeed. I said it needed a lot of work.
My job is to implement what the "graphics artist" sends.
I had that site looking OK at high resolution, but it was (as you
said)
ghastly at low resolution. I have a long history with code in
general,
but only a few months experience with css and websites at this point.
I'll get there.

Finally:
I originally asked if anybody knew of any "major" websites that
offered mode changes, in order to service different screen
resolutions.
I got a few helpful suggestions and lots of typical usenet hostility.

I'm beginning to think the idea of "mode change" toggles on every page
is NOT
appropriate for most websites, but I STILL think it's a good idea
for sites (like Hans Wilenmann's) that are primarily image display
sites.

......if I've got a high resolution wide-screen monitor, attached to a
zippy
connection, I don't want see 600 pixel wide images as the "big" image.
Worse yet, I don't want to have to click twice to see that.

Toggling image sizes on the fly is NOT something you would do with
css.
I never said it was.

But ALSO swapping css--when making those mode changes--does make sense
to me, in certain special cases, like sites that specialize in high-
resolution, sharp-focus
images. I like to try new things. I thought I might get some helpful
suggestions
here. Actually I did. Along with the usual crap.

dorayme wrote:

In article
0f6ea2fb-d839-4c31-b54d-1a4d18201af5...oglegroups.com
,
salmobytes <Sandy.Pittendrigh (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

That's one reason why I started
thinking about dynamic css.
http://wage.cns.montana.edu

This breaks horribly.

And oddly the reason is that (s)he set up widths and some padding in
ems. Hence it breaks on text resize.

I see from the header that (s)he's added whitespace on both sides of the
logo image so that could resize, trouble is that the margins are fixed
when auto would have worked.

Most commercial sites with image intensity are fixed width or very
cleverly designed. By far the first.

Now, I'm sure everyone has convinced you to use ems for widths. In this
kind of layout where you want the things that are side by side to remain
that way, that presents real problems on text resize. I think setting
widths as percentages or even in pixels makes more sense in having the
design hold together.

Now, I entered into an extended rather nasty discussion on resizing
images for variable width layouts in one of html groups afew months
back. The troglodytes here prefer fixed width small images and
hotlinking to a larger. Frankly, they don't get the visual design
aspects needed for commercial sites. But you can set image widths in
percent if you like (caveats on pixelated edges) and it's also possible
to use a little js to resource the images to different sizes if you
detect the browser width. That actually has been possible since NS4!.

As far as the small screen devices, my thinking these days is just to
serve a different simpler page, closer to a lightly styled RSS feed than
the original layout. With most pages these days being CMS generated,
that's not a hard to generate and serve up by having a little mod
rewrite sniff out accept types and such things.

Now, for the insults to roll in...

Jeff

I think you should not think any more for a

while about anything dynamic. Calm right down and be happier with
less. Your users will thank you.