Someone talk me out of this

[Mandi]

I am sooo sick of doing pages that are 620 wide.[nbsp][nbsp]I really, really want to make my new layout 780 wide, and include directions on how to resize for those 12 people out there still on tiny monitors.[nbsp][nbsp]Maybe give them coupons for reading glasses or something.[nbsp][nbsp]I am personally set to 1024 even on my laptop, and it's soooo obnoxious to see all that dead space.

[jimbo]

You *could* bump it up a whole 20px to 640, you know...[nbsp][nbsp];)

-jim

[Tatu]

Now, now... I used to think the same way about handicap parking until I took an elderly man to the local community pool one day. We used his handicap rear-view mirror thing and some woman had the nerve to tell him he didn't look handicapped and shouldn't ruin it for other people. This man had had knee surgery and was under a lot of pain.

-Tatu

--
...what some one who had knee surgery and was under a lot of pain was doing swimming was beyond me, though. ;)[nbsp]

[jimbo]

what some one who had knee surgery and was under a lot of pain was doing swimming was beyond me, though
Why would any handicapped person be swimming?[nbsp][nbsp]So why are there handicapped spaces at the pool?[nbsp][nbsp]That's like having reserved parking at the local Six-Flags for people who are under 36" tall, pregnant, and have a heart condition ;) .

-jim

(No offense intended for those handicapped people who do enjoy going to the pool)

[dank]

This man had had knee surgery and was under a lot of pain. Sounds like me on an average day...

Dcrepit

[Deb]

ahhh come on....swimming is one of the BEST things for almost all humans especially those with a knee problem or otherwise.[nbsp][nbsp]The pool was my favorite place when I was having back problems.[nbsp][nbsp]It was the BEST therapy I could have hoped for.[nbsp][nbsp]I also have a nephew that is considered a total vegetable but you put him in the pool and the smiles on his face are non-stop.[nbsp][nbsp]It's the only place he can really "move" with freedom :)

Deb
[nbsp]- Splash!

[sheila]

Yes, I am really surprised about the pool remarks. FDR, who had polio and was wheel chair bound, as a result, often exercised in a pool. Many handicapped people can benefit greatly from the pool. ???
It provides a bouyancy that the air around us doesn't provide, helping them to become much more mobile in the water.

[Deb]

Per your request....

Mandi, even those with their resolutions turned up often times do not understand the scroll bar option.[nbsp][nbsp]Many sites try their best to not only keep the page constrained by width but also by height to avoid assuming the visitor knows to scroll down.[nbsp][nbsp]By even having some length to your page you are already walking on the wild side!

Also remember that many of the laptops and WebTVs et al cannot handle those wider widths.

To be true, we often build to accommodate others that can benefit... handicapable bathrooms and parking come to mind.[nbsp][nbsp]It's important we do not forget this when designing.

Deb
[nbsp]- Then again...FutureQuest is wider and had Flash to boot :P

[Mandi]

You're right, you're right.[nbsp][nbsp]I had not thought of the WebTV'ers.[nbsp][nbsp]I have waaaayyyyy more than my fair share, thanks to demographics. I already alienate them from my freebie java chat room.

I would think (oh, dear . . . HOPE!) that FQ (just in reference to the .net site itself, I mean) can largely ignore that audience since there are likely not too many people developing over their WebTV connection.[nbsp][nbsp]Ack, no hard drive, no FTP, no telnet . . . OMG, not even an AOTA forum cookie, LOLOL . . . .

Back to *narrow* focus, hehe.[nbsp][nbsp]Thanks for the reality check.

-Mandi
*What do you mean, I can't cash a reality check??

[dank]

You *could* bump it up a whole 20px to 640, you know... Don't forget that the scroll bars take up some of that available 640.[nbsp][nbsp]600-620 (not everyone maximizes their windows, although I fail to understand why) is probably a safer bet.

handicapable bathrooms and parking Don't get me started on handicapped parking...[nbsp][nbsp]99% of the time they're the only empty spots in the lot (and the best ones to boot), and it's often a monster truck with a handicapped permit parked there.[nbsp][nbsp]Yeah, right.

do not understand the scroll bar option I saw some survery statistics (or, as I prefer to call the field and the class: sadistics) last year about that subject.[nbsp][nbsp]They had done the same survey a year or two earlier.[nbsp][nbsp]The initial one suggested very few people understood scrolling down the page, but by the follow up survey, very few people did not understand it.[nbsp][nbsp]I'd like to think the human species is bound to evolve a teenie bit in mental capacity after thousands of years...[nbsp][nbsp]:P

Down

------------------
The artist formerly known as Dluded

[Melprophet]

Gotta pipe in on this one. You never know what ails people by looking at them. Someone with a heart condition or emphysema can step up into an SUV, but not walk a hundred feet. Cancer patients might look perfectly healthy, fit and fine on the outside. Same for people who've had back surgery or knee surgery or like me, cursed with having had a herniated disc surgically repaired when I was 30.

Swimming is great exercise for everyone, but it's almost always the prescribed exercise for people with serious health problems or injuries because it is a non-strenuous activity. People with heart ailments swim because the water makes it unnecessary to carry their full weight during exercise. People recovering or suffering from knee, back or hip problems also swim for similar reasons, and also because other forms of exercise cause greater wear and impact on the body just in general.

My uncle, who has MS for example, can't walk at all anymore without a walker and even with that, it's not easy going...but he can swim better than most people because his arms and upper body are so strong. One of the things that keeps them strong is swimming.

I spent a year with a handicapped permit myself after my back surgery and got plenty of these comments because I looked perfectly well...But I wasn't at all well for many months after surgery. You could never tell from looking at me back then that I had back surgery if you saw me get out of my car in the handicapped spot, walk 20 steps and into the bank for example...20 steps didn't make my back hurt. But 50 steps sure did.

A very elderly man with a handicapped permit once approached me in a parking lot after seeing me park in the handicapped spot next to him. He didn't think I needed to park there and very politely and gently said the following thing to me:

"I know it looks like a great parking spot to someone like you. But believe me, when you need it, it's the worst spot in the lot."

Words to live by.

Mel

[SneakyDave]

I don't mean to diss the Special Olympics, but how do they handle the handicap parking there? Almost all of them are handicapped! Not everybody can get in the front row!

[koala]

...what some one who had knee surgery and was under a lot of pain was doing swimming was beyond me, though. Maybe training for the Athens Paralympics?? :)

Simon :)

= Women are like parking spots - all the good ones are taken, and the only ones available are handicapped =

[Mandi]

The same way it's handled whenever nearby parking isn't available:[nbsp][nbsp]the able bodied driver drops off riders, and parks out *wherever* and then walks to join the group :)![nbsp][nbsp]In the case of Special Olympics, many are such great athletes that special parking is not necessary anyway.

I qualify for a permit.[nbsp][nbsp]I do not get one precisely for the prejudgement factor - I "look" like a healthy young woman.[nbsp][nbsp]I get dropped at the door frequently.[nbsp][nbsp]I *know* in my head that the issue is strictly between my doctors and myself, and not the sidewalk public . . . but I'm still moving towards being able to disregard the peanut gallery.[nbsp][nbsp]It's not easy.

[Matt]

Back to the original topic, I dislike blank space on the right as well, but try to accomodate even 640 x 480 screens.[nbsp][nbsp]One way to accomodate everyone is to set things up in tables and set the cells as percentages. If you have a block of text, it auto-formats based on window size. Although this doesn't help for large graphics, you can space the graphics out to fill the blank space on larger screens by using tables.

Finally, if your web site is mainly graphics, you could create two versions, a low-res one and a hi-res one, then either put a link for the hi-res one on the lo-res default homepage or use JavaScript to detect resolution and load the proper page. I'm betting that you could even set up some fancy dynamic page generation to scale the graphics down if necessary.

* A site designed for 1024 x 768 is nearly as unusable on a 640 x 480 screen as a site designed for 640 x 480 is on a 1600 x 1200 screen.

-Matt

[Tibbits]

I designed my site from the ground up to be scaleable using percentage width tables etc. Sites with a rigid layout which are designed for the lowest denominator look dreadful at higher resolutions.

Does anyone know of a webtv emulator? I've never had access to one and can't help wondering how the sites I work with render on them.

[dank]

I believe this will do what you want:

http://developer.webtv.net/design/tools/viewer/

However, as much of a stickler as I am for browser compatibility, I believe it's a waste of time spending any extra energy worrying about WebTV.[nbsp][nbsp]It's about as productive as wondering how well your popup windows work if someone turns off JavaScript...[nbsp][nbsp]Not your fault if they choose to use the wrong tool for the job.[nbsp][nbsp]I've yet to see any period in my stats with more than 0.5% of visitors being WebTV.[nbsp][nbsp]Can't say I blame 'em, considering how awful everything looks on it.[nbsp][nbsp]:)

Dspicable

[Tibbits]

Wow, thanks:)

I like to work on the priciple that if it works in Netscape 2 it'll work on anything... that must go doubly for WebTV

[dank]

I'd actually say that's true for anything but WebTV, which really doesn't deserve to be considered a browser.[nbsp][nbsp]If it looks good on WebTV, it will probably look less than desirable on the other 99.5% of browsers (and that's not an exaggerated number).[nbsp][nbsp]I know which side of the fence I'd rather straddle...

Dan

[Kara]

MY moniter is 12 years old...13 inch screen and a res 640 by 480.[nbsp][nbsp]My scroll bars are over worked and underpaid LOL.

Anyway from my POV...I know the prob is on my end so most of the time I won't click out of your site because I have to scroll.[nbsp][nbsp]However scrolling left to right to read the actual text makes me dizzy so I don't.[nbsp][nbsp]If you don't want to code for the people with old systems then just make sure you have actual text around 620.[nbsp][nbsp]Keep in mind that AOL takes a lot of viewing space away too and most of the people who don't know about scroll bars are using AOL.

My other big pet peeve being on the smaller side is when webmasters force the actual window to be a certain size (usually a pop up) and it is bigger then my screen...more often then not the scroll bars are gone.

Kara
[nbsp]- Santa left the moniter at the north pole :(

[Kara]

before someone tells me how to change my resolution I just thought I'd add that windows won't allow it...reverts right back because different resolutions just don't work.[nbsp][nbsp]Oh well scroll bars are cool.[nbsp][nbsp]I like the new colored ones :P

Kara