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MTDesigns
01-17-2000, 12:44 PM
Hi everyone![nbsp][nbsp]I just changed the design my IRM's main page (figured it should look like a main page, instead of just another page on my main acc), and it's also the first time that I've designed anything wide enough to need to scroll...does anyone have any suggestions on how I can make the width narrower without any major changes?[nbsp][nbsp]I use Wordpad, and am not an HTML guru...but know enough for basics ;)[nbsp][nbsp].

I'm pleased with the layout, and the scrolling when at smaller sizes doesn't really bother me...but I remember many people saying that it does matter.[nbsp][nbsp]I just want it to be easy reading for everyone, if possible :).

http://www.stopsexoffenders.com

TIA!

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Joi
My ParenTime (Info Community)
http://www.myparentime.com
STOP Sex Offenders (Child Safety)
http://www.stopsexoffenders.com
[This message has been edited by MTDesigns (edited 01-17-00@11:47 am)]
Dan Kaplan
01-17-2000, 02:07 PM
I think anyone with a 15" (or 640 resolution) monitor will have problems with scrolling, so there's still some grey area there...

I try to never use fixed table sizes wider than 600 to avoid such problems.[nbsp][nbsp]I either use tables narrower than 600 or use % sizing, usually the latter.

Dan
wolfstalks
01-17-2000, 03:15 PM
I noticed that, in at least a couple of your cells, they were of fixed pixel size.[nbsp][nbsp]What I usually do is make the main table 100% of the screen and then fix individual cells to the percentage points that prevent sideways scrolling.[nbsp][nbsp]It usually works, BUT still have some minor scrolling when viewed on a 14" monitor at 640 X 480.[nbsp][nbsp]I build the pages to work best at 800 X 600 and then view them on an old monitor at the lower settings and adjust until they look the best that I can make them in both.
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Have a Good One
Bob
Shalazar
01-17-2000, 03:22 PM
I wouldn't suggest using a percentage based table width and then hard-coded table cells, as they usually clash when rendered by the browser.[nbsp][nbsp]You either must use relative percentages throughout, or pixel values throughout until they develop something better.

I never use table widths of more then 625 pixels, just for reference.

Anyway, I think your page is ALMOST able to fit on the page, except your margins are killing you.[nbsp][nbsp]See if putting these tags in your <BODY> tag won't help bring it in line:

MARGINHEIGHT=&quot;0&quot; MARGINWIDTH=&quot;0&quot; TOPMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; LEFTMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; RIGHTMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; BOTTOMMARGIN=&quot;0&quot;

That should eliminate that left margin which is pushing your page into the scroll area.


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Shalazar

www.charisma-carpenter.com (http://www.charisma-carpenter.com)
The Internet's Premier site for everything Charisma.
Justin
01-17-2000, 04:01 PM
Personally, I always use either a 580 pixel table or a 600 pixel table with the margins at zero.

One note though - physical monitor size has absolutely nothing to do with resolution. My 14&quot; eMachines monitor (on the other PC) runs 1024 x 768, same as my 17&quot; monitors on the main PC. I've known people with 20&quot; monitors using 640 x 480, and I've run 1280 x 1024 on a 15&quot; Gateway monitor for a while... it's all a matter of settings, not the monitor size itself...

At any rate, since Windows defaults to 640 x 480 and there are far too many newbie's out there who don't know you can change this, I try to keep my sites viewable at 640 x 480 as well as WebTV resolutions (can't scroll sideways on WebTV).

HTH

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support
Dan Kaplan
01-17-2000, 04:24 PM
I wouldn't suggest using a percentage based table width and then hard-coded table cells, as they usually clash when rendered by the browser. Not if you're careful.[nbsp][nbsp];)
Anyway, I think your page is ALMOST able to fit on the page, except your margins are killing you.[nbsp][nbsp]See if putting these tags in your <BODY> tag won't help bring it in line:

MARGINHEIGHT=&quot;0&quot; MARGINWIDTH=&quot;0&quot; TOPMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; LEFTMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; RIGHTMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; BOTTOMMARGIN=&quot;0&quot; The problem with depending on that is it won't work for pre-version 4 browsers (not sure about IE).[nbsp][nbsp]It's nice from a design standpoint, but not so good if you're relying on it for consistency.[nbsp][nbsp]I'd venture to guess that people with smaller monitors (sorry Justin, lower resolution settings :) ) are more likely to be the people using older browsers.
(can't scroll sideways on WebTV) Can you do anything on WebTV.[nbsp][nbsp]The concept of navigating a page without a mouse seems very archaic and inconvenient.[nbsp][nbsp]I can certainly see the appeal of $99 for internet use to a non computer type, though...

Dan
Shalazar
01-17-2000, 05:08 PM
I've got to be quite honest, you have to set a limit of your lowest common demoninator for whom you're going to design.[nbsp][nbsp]In a perfect world, it would be easy to design using strictly colors from the color cube, as well as a page that looked great on a 14&quot; monitor running 16 color, irrespective of browser type.

But let's face it, it's neither feasible nor realistic.[nbsp][nbsp]If I chose to design to ensure backward compatibility with v2.0 browsers, which still only interpret basic HTML, then not only am I crippling the evolution of my website, but also penalizing the people who embrace the current software -- software which is, after all, completely free!

Check your stats, use the &quot;All Agents&quot; button to see which browsers are accessing your page the most.[nbsp][nbsp]Make your decisions based on that.[nbsp][nbsp]If you need to manipulate the frequency of browsers, make sure there's a prominent link on your page for people to download the newest browsers for the best viewing experience.

You can't please everyone all the time, but you shouldn't be hindered by people stuck in the relative dark ages, because there's no excuse not to be running a new generation browser, well except for the fact that some are notoriously buggy, but we'll forget that because it invalidates my argument hehehehe.

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Shalazar

www.charisma-carpenter.com (http://www.charisma-carpenter.com)
The Internet's Premier site for everything Charisma.
[This message has been edited by Shalazar (edited 01-17-00@4:10 pm)]
Dan Kaplan
01-17-2000, 05:33 PM
Although the number is dropping steadily, most stats I've seen indicate that at least 5-10% of people are still using version 3 or older browsers.

If that doesn't sound like much, think of it this way:[nbsp][nbsp]Imagine a retail store turning away every 10th customer because they had black shoes and you happened to be 10th in line and wearing black shoes.[nbsp][nbsp]If it were me, I'd be pretty pissed, even if I could go home and change shoes.

Same goes for browsers.[nbsp][nbsp]I've yet to see a site on the internet that I would bother downloading a new browser just to view it (sort of in hindsight, as I've already got the &quot;new&quot; browsers).[nbsp][nbsp]Furthermore, I'd probably never return.[nbsp][nbsp]That's the mindset I try to design pages with -- a single unhappy viewer makes it a failure to some degree.[nbsp][nbsp]Sure, you can't please everyone, but you can go down in flames trying![nbsp][nbsp]:)

Driven
MTDesigns
01-17-2000, 05:58 PM
Imagine a retail store turning away every 10th Customer because they had black shoes and you happened to be 10th in line and wearing black shoes.
Hmmm...I think this is a bit extreme for what I was asking ;) .

Same goes for browsers.[nbsp][nbsp]I've yet to see a site on the internet that I would bother downloading a new browser just to view it[nbsp][nbsp]Furthermore, I'd probably never return.[nbsp][nbsp]That's the mindset I try to design pages with -- a single unhappy viewer makes it a failure to some degree.
So are you saying that after viewing this page with a slight scroll at the bottom, you'd never return (not referring to content)?[nbsp][nbsp]I do agree that you cannot please 100% of visitors...but I'd like to know how the majority felt about it. Personally, if it was content that I was interested in viewing, the scroll wouldn't stop me from returning.

JMO,

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Joi
My ParenTime (Info Community)
http://www.myparentime.com
STOP Sex Offenders (Child Safety)
http://www.stopsexoffenders.com
Dan Kaplan
01-17-2000, 06:09 PM
Yeah, the analogy is extreme in your case.[nbsp][nbsp]That was intended more as a way of looking at the general situation.
So are you saying that after viewing this page with a slight scroll at the bottom, you'd never return (not referring to content)? Tough to say.[nbsp][nbsp]Everything fit in fine on my screen, so I didn't have a problem.[nbsp][nbsp]Because any sideways scrolling with your page would most likely just be the links on either side, it's probably fairly minor.[nbsp][nbsp]If it were content that I had to scroll to see, I probably wouldn't return.

Getting started in all this, I read lots of tutorials on design and awards and search engine (Yahoo) criteria (often one and the same), and they made it quite clear that sideways scrolling is a sure way to be ignored.

Dan
Justin
01-17-2000, 07:33 PM
Here's a better real-world analogy: Imagine calling a business that required a touch-tone phone. This happens all the time, though the percentage of rotary phones still in use is probably a lot less than 5 - 10%...

And I agree about the scrolling - that 5-10% doesn't really apply here either. Of that 10% using less than a 4.x browser, how many are runnint 640 x 480? This should lower that percentage of users who would have to scroll by quite a bit.

I code for 4.x and up, not really worried about 3.x browsers other than Opera and WebTV (both support CSS better than Netscape btw). There are issues with (for example) the CNC in Netscape 3.0 with the cookies - I'm not sure if it's a browser problem or my code, but either way, it works in all other browsers so I will not dig into the issue...

My lowest common denominator would be:

Browsers:
Netscape 4.0
IE 4.0
Opera 3.51
WebTV (depending on the site)

Res: 640 x 480
Colors: 16 bit or better (can't stick to the &quot;web safe&quot; pallette...)

Anything lower, I don't care about. If you don't have a video card with at least 512k of RAM on it and a halfway decent monitor, and a few minutes to go get a real browser, then I'm sorry :)[nbsp][nbsp]Besides, I would be one of hundreds of sites that would not work on your system.

One last note - go surf around at Yahoo and you'll see what coding for the lowest common denominator will do - it's an ugly site IMO (they could at least specify a background color... it clashes with my color scheme badly), but on the plus side it is very fast (and I'm sure bandwidth was a large consideration there too)...

Compare this to HotBot, chock full of 4.x CSS; Altavista won't work at 640 x 480 w/o scrolling sideways, and so on. But Yahoo has no javascript, java, very few images, no CSS, no set link colors, or anything beyond HTML 3.2 (if even that high)...

Just my opinions :)

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support
Shalazar
01-17-2000, 08:10 PM
Amen Brother Justin...
Dan Kaplan
01-17-2000, 08:15 PM
And here I thought Justin would agree with me, based on cross-browser compatibility.[nbsp][nbsp]:)
Of that 10% using less than a 4.x browser, how many are running 640 x 480? Well, I don't have any numbers to back it up, but I'd guess the correlation is pretty high between old browsers and low monitor resolutions.
Compare this to HotBot, chock full of 4.x CSS; Altavista won't work at 640 x 480 w/o scrolling sideways, and so on. But Yahoo has no javascript... I agree that Yahoo's site is not the most attractive, although I think that is more design taste than anything necessitated by code.[nbsp][nbsp]I don't use HotBot too often, but whenever I do it's unbelieveably slow.[nbsp][nbsp]I don't know any reason for that, but it's very consistent.

I'd be interested to see Altavista's traffic volume (relative to other engines) before and after their recent site re-design.[nbsp][nbsp]I think the number of people that respond positively to simplicity is often under calculated.[nbsp][nbsp]My main reason for mentioning that is that Yahoo may be ugly and plain, but it certainly doesn't suffer in popularity.

It's also quite reasonable to say that certain types of sites need worry about these issues far less than others.[nbsp][nbsp]In your case, Justin, I wouldn't bother worrying about version 3 browsers.[nbsp][nbsp]Anyone looking for a host is very unlikely to have an old browser.[nbsp][nbsp]In my case, as little as three months ago I was often seeing 25%+ of my visitors with version 3 or older.[nbsp][nbsp]About half the people I've done design work for thus far have been using Netscape 3, so I certainly can't ignore that![nbsp][nbsp];)

So many choices, so many opinions...

Dan
Dan Kaplan
01-17-2000, 08:27 PM
and a few minutes to go get a real browser One other thing:[nbsp][nbsp]Consider that someone with an old browser and small monitor is likely to be running at best a 28.8 modem, in which case downloading a new browser will take them several hours at best.[nbsp][nbsp]Often more, once you factor in the frequent disconnects over that length of time.[nbsp][nbsp]You'd better have a very good site to expect someone to go through that just to view it properly.

Dan
Justin
01-17-2000, 08:58 PM
<Personal Opinions>
Hm... I downloaded IE5 as well as Netscape 4.08 over my 33.6 modem that only connected at 28.8 - it didn't take that long... do that many people have problems staying connected? In the dialup days, I was dropped maybe once a week unexpectedly, with 2 different ISP's over about a year's time... either way, it's not that hard to start a download, go watch a movie, come back, and install the program (of course now it's whole CD's and OS's rather than applications but that's a different story ;) )

I do agree that someone on Widows 3.1 and Netscape 3.0 Gold would probably be using a lower resolution...

As for HotBot - there are three kinds of slowness... Slow as in a slow server; slow as in a heavy site (graphics etc); or slow as in rendering, which CSS positioning is known for on a slower system...

But checking out HotBot just now (and noticing I'm number one for one of my other sites for &quot;virtual dj&quot; ;) ) it seems no slower than any other site - I can't really tell how heavy the site is as far as download time, but the server responded and I was viewing the results almost instantly. And scrolling the page isn't jerky as I remember it being on the 233 with IE4 and a cheap video card (yes, it makes a helluva difference)...

I am anal about browser compatibility - but only as far as making sure a site works with the newest of both browsers, plus the others... The list in my earlier post is what I mean, but also consider my idea of compatibility with most... I want the site to look identical in every respect, not just close. This is something that simply cannot be done in IE 3.0 or Netscape 3.0 without resorting to:

No CSS
No JavaScript above 1.0 (or maybe 1.1?)
No Image Rollovers (falls under the above but deserves a separate mention ;) )
No DHTML
No <HR> tags (I don't use them anyway - yes they work but each browser and each version renders them differently - even IE4 and IE5 are different there)

So I do many things to make a site work with any 4.x browser, Opera, WebTV, and I always do a few extra things so that a text based browser such as Lynx will work as well (though you'll of course lose some features).

The only thing I really would need if I were a web designer (which I am not) would be a Mac, for full compatibility testing... but I'm not *that* anal about it :P Besides, IE is IE and Netscape is Netscape whether on Linux, Windows, Mac, or whatever else...

I have to quit ranting about this stuff... I could be here all day...

</Personal Opinions>

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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Support
teach1st
01-17-2000, 09:59 PM
Besides, IE is IE and Netscape is Netscape whether on Linux, Windows, Mac, or whatever else... I've seen IE 4 for Mac render some HTML differently than IE 4 for Windows (not counting[nbsp][nbsp]fonts). I used to pull my hair out designing pages at home (Windows) for use on the computers in my class (Mac). Now I use Netscape at school :)

(I will concede that the formatting differences may have been caused by less-than-perfect HTML..I'm good at less than perfect!)
Tatu
01-17-2000, 11:05 PM
I really don't care to go and work just so 5% of the web can't access my site. If they don't care or know to change with the times, it's their problem (NOT MINE!) :D

BTW, I run 580 wide w/o margins OR 560 wide w/ margines. ;)

-Tatu

==
This thread grew FAST...
Tatu
01-18-2000, 01:31 AM
Hmm, I remember somebody saying it really wasn't neccessary too. That it was for 14&quot; monitor people or something (and how many of those are there now anyways?!? Plus, if they surf with a 14&quot; monitor they must be used to all the screwwed up pages by now heheh :) )

-Tatu
MTDesigns
01-18-2000, 01:59 AM
hehe...just the answer I was looking for ;) .
Dan Kaplan
01-19-2000, 03:37 PM
Just to make sure this horse is thoroughly beaten...

A quick calculation gives me the following:

My experience with 28.8/33.6 dial-ups is that you are lucky to average 1k/second downloads over a long period.[nbsp][nbsp]Assuming I haven't made any silly calculation errors, that would be 3.6 mb per hour.[nbsp][nbsp]What are Netscape and IE now, 15+ mb for a full install?[nbsp][nbsp]That's putting it in the four hour range!

Additionally, I know a lot of dial-up services (Compuserve is apparently one) require activity every 30 minutes or they disconnect you.[nbsp][nbsp]That makes it rather difficult to leave the download unattended.[nbsp][nbsp]And it seems the longer the download, exponentially the greater chance of a disconnect...

The only point to all of that is that it's unfair to just assume it's the viewer's problem if they don't have a current browser.[nbsp][nbsp]There also might be hard drive and memory limitations to consider.[nbsp][nbsp]The internet is about free and equal access; it shouldn't be dependent on how new or expensive someone's computer is.

I went back and checked HotBot on two new computers (3-4 months old, I probably hadn't used HotBot in that period), and you're right, it's moving along snappily (sp?).[nbsp][nbsp]Both computers have more video memory, RAM, and faster processors than their corresponding predecessors, so HotBot must be a very memory intensive design.[nbsp][nbsp]The two old computers were a P200 and P133, so that could be a big factor.

Dan
Justin
01-19-2000, 05:20 PM
you are lucky to average 1k/second downloads... What ISP do you use? Ouch that is slow... I always got at least 3k/second via my WinModem, and about 5k/sec on the 56k modem... 1k is 9 kbps (8 data/1 stop bits)...

About requiring activity, my last 2 dialup providers did this - but downloading *is* activity... they simply didn't want me sitting idle. Both would kick you after 15 minutes of nothing - so I have always kept Outlook set to check mail every 10, solving that problem and allowing me to be connected for weeks at a time...
The internet is about free and equal access; it shouldn't be dependent on how new or expensive someone's computer is. Browsers are free too... These days, you have to have a relatively fast PC to do anything useful (not because older computers are not useful, but newer programs are hogs ;) ). Also, these days dialup connections are a LOT more reliable, are usually unlimited hours per month for a flat rate (I used to pay $13/month and was dialed in 24/7), modems are cheap, PC's are cheap, most cheap PC's come with good 56k modems...

In other words, it is not difficult at all to keep up with the times, for the most part - even being one year behind is not bad, but is a lot cheaper - think one year ago... PII-450's were popular already, 56k (v.90) was already the set standard, etc - today you can pick up a system like that for less than $600, complete, if you know where to look.

But I'm getting off the subject again...
The two old computers were a P200 and P133, so that could be a big factor. I agree - I remember how slow HotBot was on the 233 with the Diamond card... major difference with an overclocked PIII and 2 Voodoo3 2000 3dfx cards ;)[nbsp][nbsp] But I suspect they may have improved the design as well, plus IE5 is faster than IE4 was - too many factors to really know why it's faster.

BTW - I used HotBot as an example of what *not* to do, rather than what to do... I disagree with their theory (though I don't know if they detect the browser and send either a CSS or non-css version accordingly...? It's possible...)

But HotBot's reason for using CSS is this: when you get your search results, the stuff on the lower-right (the actual results) loads first, with everything else popping in around it. It does make it a lot faster on slower connections (where a table would have to fully load before you would see anything).

------------
Justin
-- Take that!!![nbsp][nbsp]Lousy horse... ;)[nbsp]
Dan Kaplan
01-19-2000, 05:37 PM
I'm not on a dial-up anymore -- can you guess why?[nbsp][nbsp];)[nbsp][nbsp][nbsp][nbsp]School connections, free dial-ups, local ISP's, stuff of that sort.[nbsp][nbsp]1k/sec was pretty average, with the very rare 2k-3k spike (and not just my connections).[nbsp][nbsp]I think I was able to get 5k-7k rates on the 56k modem before going to cable.[nbsp][nbsp]I just transferred a 500k work file this morning in under 4 seconds![nbsp][nbsp]:)

As far as disconnects, I know several ISP's do not consider downloading &quot;activity.&quot;[nbsp][nbsp]:([nbsp][nbsp]Neither is browsing a page.[nbsp][nbsp]Only signals sent upstream, if that's the right term.

Personally, I do not consider $600 a big investment to use the internet.[nbsp][nbsp]But it's also a much higher priority to me, and probably all of us in this forum, than it is to the other 6 billion people around the world.[nbsp][nbsp]Last number I saw pegged internet users as high as 200 million -- hardly a drop in the ocean, overall.[nbsp][nbsp]Barriers are quickly coming down for the remaining 5.8 billion, but a lot of people rely on hand-me-down type computers that simply cannot be expected to keep up with the latest and greatest.

Dialogue

oh what a difference one ommitted word can make...
[This message has been edited by Dan Kaplan (edited 01-19-00@4:39 pm)]