I've recently discovered that my website looks different depending on the size of the monitor. I'm not sure if this is due to the css properties I'm using or because I have floating images on the left and right side of each web page. Can anyone point me to a 'coding for monitor size' best practice site? I'm coding with css2 and HTML 4.01 Transitional, using doctypes and adhering to w3c page standards.
Please code with HTML DTD Strict and CSS 3 in future. What is the URL of the website? Generally, monitor size affecting your design is due to the design not being fluid enough. I'm sure deathshadow will come and show you one of his many fluid designs if you ask politely, but essentially what a fluid design does is removes elements that interfere with page layout as a page gets smaller.
On my site, I force a minimum page width. beyond that, it only has a little bit that can effectively expand, and it looks really funny on ultra wide monitors... I should probably put a max width in as well.
The TOPIC of this thread raises my hackles -- hell it raises my hackle's hackles! The concept of coding to ANY monitor size is broken thinking, as one should be coding fluidly, dynamically and responsively to auto-adjust to ALL sizes. You're using distrubing old-tech, with CSS2 slapped on a tranny like cheap theatrical makeup, but that doesn't preclude at LEAST having fluid, semi-fluid accessible design. UNFORTUNATELY most people out there making sites in Tranny still have their heads up 1997's ARSE, making it a bit hard to even explain the concepts involved in accessible cross browser layout. Really you'll need to post a bit more so you can add a link -- or maybe you could PM it for peer review first (do they allow 1 post wonders to PM links here?) @digdogger: min-width + max width (proper term "semi fluid layout") is one of the most rational design choices you can make. While it's nice to have content expand to fit, there are practical limits. One of the things I suggest doing with said practical limits is make that max-width be 'elastic' -- based on EM's instead of pixels. If you've built your site properly with dynamic fonts (% or em sizings) it should be auto-enlarging the text content based off the default text size in browser or OS (or both) -- meaning people like myself running large fonts/120dpi or more on their system don't have to dive for the zoom just because of one lazy designer. That means the fonts are automatically larger for those users, so it makes sense to increase the maximum width offered to them as well.
I agree with deathshadow. Coding to cater to different monitor sizes specifically is terrible, awful practice. Never, ever, EVER, define anything in "px" width. Always, use percentages. Make your site fluid and adaptable to all screen sizes, then none of this is a problem.