Try making two stylesheets (or more), and use javascript to choose the stylesheet based on screen size. You may even want to make it readable for normal screens. I couldn't read the menu without scrolling up and down.
only forum owner or forum moderator can do that, we can only submit report of a thread, upper right of your post
You should design for what most people in your audience use. As you can see by the link quoted above, 800x600 will soon have the same numbers as the 640 bracket. Nobody.
So I should exclude 8% of the internet, that is a horrible way to think. That's fine, when they leave your site because they can't see anything, they will come to mine and spend their money Here:
I just had to post again because I see in your sig you have a link to a Usability blog ... I hope that is not your site, because that would just be hilarious!! Anyone else see the irony here???
Lawlz, sure. I accommodate 800x600 easily because I can, but I do draw the line somewhere... like, I don't test in Nutscrape x.x... not even sure where I'd download such a beast. I also generally don't write for IE5.5 and below, although sometimes i check a page in it for fun... usually still readable, just a little goofy-looking. More broadly, I expect rezzes lower than 800x600 to INCREASE... due to more mobile internetters (mobile phones and PDAs... Opera Mini woo!). So, bloat my page with another stylesheet or write the original one flexible-enough that one size fits all? Hmmmm.... : ) If I use JS (and I do for min-max width for IE6... this is how I make my pages 800x600-friendly) I use the CSS expression instead of an external script. This make the CSS not valid of course but since mine's already invalid with Peterned's CSS hover .htc file so IE6 can :hover, I don't care, and no other browser sees it, so I don't consider it a hack: What I have on one page, got from deathshadow: * html #container, #footer { width: 780px; <--in case no JS on user's machine width: expression((document.body.clientWidth>1400) ? "1350px" : ((document.body.clientWidth>800) ? "auto" : "780px")); } Code (markup): The sizes are kinda pulled outta my butt, esp since I also don't JS and didn't know the "min-width-only" version... only works when I have a maximum. But other browsers only get min-width and everything's cool... or the trick Paul O'B uses with extra floated container and a super crazy thick border... a nice trick if you'd rather not the default small width for the non-JS IE6 crowd.
Edit, decided to send a PM because it looks like link-whoring I posted so many : ) Tho server's still down cause KPN who rules the country still having problems, anyone want a PM I can send it too, links just won't work until server back online and I have one that is online elsewhere but someone put it up and it works with min-max width but other html and css is set up wrong!! However here's the non-expression version of Paul's: http://www.pmob.co.uk/temp/min-width-ie.htm
Obviously you don't know what you are talking about in regards to designing for site width, and yes that is my blog. Here is a link to the latest issue of the Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines Book from Usability.gov. http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/updatedguidelines.html It's a pdf file. Turn to page 57, and you will see what they suggest. The same thing I do, and well as many other usability experts. Also, there is an easier way creating two different, or three different ,or four different styles to accommodate different monitor settings. That defeats the purpose of having one easy to manage style sheet. All you have to do is set the width to percentage. Lets say you want your layout to be about 900 pixels wide. You know most people use 1024 as a setting so you when you make your layout set the width to 87%. Now it will look like 900 px for most people, and it will grow or shrink to fit any size monitor.
You can use javascript to detect peoples screen resolution. http://www.pageresource.com/jscript/jscreen.htm
At work now, and I doubt they want me to download a 161 MB file, so I will look later. I'm sorry, but if 8% of the internet is still using 800x600 (I think they all work with me), I am not going to make a site unreadable to them. I know you don't design the site to work for 800, but you sure as heck make sure that they can make use of the website. Yes, I don't know how to design a website, but I know that when 8% of your visitors come as leave within seconds, it is a bad thing. And being the victim of inheriting a website that uses percentage width, don't ever do it. It is a nightmare, and IE6 hates it almost as much as I do ...
Here are a couple of sites that are not mine for those of you that are unfamiliar with having a liquid layout. http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/liquid/ http://www.smartwebby.com/web_site_design/designing_websites_for_all_resolutions.asp