Hi, I am quite new to web design and I've already come across my first hurdle. Actual viewing area of a browser, due to the space taken up by the browers main top tool bars. Ive read that you should subtract around 20-50 pixels from the top to compensate for this. so for 800x600 it would be around 780-750x600 Wanted to know what experienced designers do in this case and have any advice?
Wow, twice in a week, shall we go for three? In any case, I don't. Making assumptions about the users browser resolution is the recipe for /FAIL/. Fixed width == rubbish on most every site that is designed that way for most every system I have. 1024 'only' looks like crap on my firstgen netbook, and is a crappy little stripe on my 1920 display, while 800 friendly is even worse on the big desktop... and it's been that way for years. It's one of those cases IMHO where we need to tell the artsy fartsy "designers" to shove it, and pay more attention to accessability... though if you are looking for numbers to subtract I always take off 32px when doing things like min-width and max-width to make room for scrollbars, window frames, etc... Which seems more than sufficient for all modern operating systems and browsers. In any case, check my existing answer to this question from a previous thread.
And in the other corner.... I'm all for fixed widths! I generally still try and keep it under 1000px width - I like to keep a lot of space around my designs, and work pixel by pixel (not using percentages), and 1000px just seems right to me (over many resolutions). Unless I'm specifically targeting them, people who are still running 800x600 don't belong in my world
Ah sorry, should of searched around more before asking, but thanks for a detailed answer. The web layout will be delivered as pop-up, so people's browser resolution's is irrelevant as Im only concerned with the that popup window size. E.g. 800x600. But thanks again
Yeah, but you still use PX metric fonts for content too, so it's not like you seem concerned about accessability either
/\ Yep. Unless somebody is paying me to make a site 100% accessible, then I don't bother. Making government and university sites "accessible" was my day job in late 1990s. Switch users, JAWS etc.... it was the most boring work I've ever done. Although designing for accessibility is a noble thing to do, I don't give a crap about it on my own sites. I design for my audience/visitors. I don't have a ramp out the front of my house, or safety rails in my bathroom. And I thought we were discussing the width of websites?
Ah, when working on that scale I usually plan for double what I would for margins of the whole page so that's 64px off the width, and for height a good rule of thumb is to take off 160px to make room for horizontal scrollbar, menus and toolbars, so 736 x 440 height would be about right for a popup window that is 'safe' for the majority of users without scrollbars... Though I might consider narrowing that width down to around 600 just to make it 4:3