SillyDog701

[Antony]

A while ago, SillyDog701 Message Centre updates it's layout slightly... making the layout more suitable to browser windows opened at around 800 pixels wide.

screenshot (scaled down to 450px):


For users of using 1024 pixels wide browser windows, it should not be a big issue, at least we don't fill the white space with annoying ads.

screenshot (scaled down to 450px) from a browser window opened at 1024 pixels wide, I think it is acceptable.



A few users asked me why I do not align the layout to fit the maximum screen width... Well, if I do so, and use a browser with maximum screen size (maximised), people with Apple Cinema Display 20-inch would get following (scaled down to 450px wide)

(SillyDog701 Message Centre logo is intently left at position that confines to 750-pixel width.)

My recommendation to Windows users, please learn to use windows.



Moderator Note added by DJGM:
The first seven posts in this thread were split from [url=http://sillydog.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6776]The Really Quite
Unusual Screengrabs Thread . . .[/url] , to stop it going far too off-topic.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.8

[Pu7o]

And how about aligning the logo as well as the rest of the layout?

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[Pu7o]

My recommendation to Windows users, please learn to use windows.

So you're saying that using a maximised window for browsing is stupid and people doing it should be punished? I use a maximised window because when I'm browsing, I usually don't want other apps taking my screen space. What's wrong with that?

It's not a matter of learning, it's a matter of preference.

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[Don_HH2K]

Another thing that should be noted in addition to this being a matter of preference is that not every browser takes a two-pane approach such as Safari, IE, and Firefox do. The width of these browsers is the width of the content you're viewing.

I run at 1024x768, but I have a three-pane view browser, that is, toolbars on top, sidebar on the bottom-left, and content on the bottom-right. So if I stay maximized, my browsing area works out to somewhere around 850x600. If I use a window at 800x600, then my total viewpoint of the browsing area works out to more like 640x480, which is too low, as I've found, for browsing. Out of habit, though, I run Netscape 4 maximized at 1024x768 as well on my NT machine.

Of course, when I use a high screen resolution like 1280x960 (as is the case on my 2000 machine), I actually do use a window, for the reasons Antony mentioned above. Though I haven't measured it, the windows I use appear to be somewhere around 1000x800 (best guess).

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

[Antony]

My recommendation to Windows users, please learn to use windows.

So you're saying that using a maximised window for browsing is stupid and people doing it should be punished?

When did I say they should be punished? I only suggested them to use "windows", and leave some room for other things.

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[DJGM]

My recommendation to Windows users, please learn to use windows.

So you're saying that using a maximised window for browsing
is stupid and people doing it should be punished?

When did I say they should be punished? I only suggested them to
use "windows", and leave some room for other things.

But not everyone have large monitors, using high resolution settings. My monitor is only 15 inches, so any
resolution over 1024x768 would mean everything would look too small. There's also the fact the anyone
using a screen resolution of 1024x768 or less (not necessarily through personal choice) may find using
unmaximised windows somewhat cluttered, with more than one or two application windows open.

Not everyone can afford (or needs) something like an Apple Cinema Display, or other similar large monitor.

And this isn't necessarily restricted to users of Microsoft Windows. I reckon there are bound to be many
users of Mac OS X and Linux (plus flavours of UNIX) that prefer to maximise their application windows.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 SeaMonkey/1.0

[beanboy89]

I use secren resoultions of 1152x864 on a 17" LCD display and 1024x768 on a 15" CRT display. I could run up to 1280x1024 on the 17" display, but I run a lower resoultion for my parents who want increased visibility and readibility.

On both screens, I always run with my browser windows maximized because I want to see as much web content as possible while reducing the amount I have to scroll. Even If I did run at 1280x1024 on my 17" display, I'd still run my browser window maximized.

To prevent this thread from becomming too off-topic, I suggest a forum moderator to split these past few messages off into a new topic.

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[Antony]

And this isn't necessarily restricted to users of Microsoft Windows. I reckon there are bound to be many users of Mac OS X and Linux (plus flavours of UNIX) that prefer to maximise their application windows.

That's true for some Mac users, especially those Mac users who do not have a wide-format display.

Also depending on the situation and the Mac users' screen size... Some applications such as Photoshop is suitable to use entire screen.

So situations such as reading PDF document or browsing word pages, and if the users have wide-format screen, opening in full (maximised) can be a kind of pain to read through.

As for UNIX (or Linux) users? Not for the shell window. To my findings, most of UNIX (or Linux) users resize windows very often, and they use "windows" a lot, and usually keep the shell window in a reasonable size.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/417.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/417.8

[Antony]

That, I really don't understand the virtue of "maximised" viewing or using entire screen estate to read web pages. And I always have problem with websites stating "best viewed with 1024x768 or higher resolution" (or similar).

Asking visitors to change their screen setting just to view someone's web site is extremely demanding, in my opinion.

Further, when they said "1024x768" resolution, they don't just mean the screen setting, but also imply that visitors use entire screen just for that particular web site.

Anyhow, this is the screenshot of browsing a website in Windows users "browsing habit".


(downsized from 1920x1200 resolution)

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

[DJGM]

Browsing with window opened maximised?
It does not look like a good idea to me.

You're browsing fullscreen on a 16:9 monitor. Most people (myself included) still have standard 4:3 monitors. And the IE7
site is designed for those that indeed still have standard 4:3 monitors, not rich Mac users with Apple Cinema Displays!

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[Edward]

My two monitors are:

19" LCD, 1280x1024

17" CRT, 1024x768

and I've been having an interesting time with the SeaMonkey (Linux) font settings. I haven't had much luck getting a font size to force a web page to appear correctly (no ads over text, no text over graphics or other text, etc.) or not to use horizontal scroll bars.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9pre) Gecko/20061111 SeaMonkey/1.0.6

[Don_HH2K]

That, I really don't understand the virtue of "maximised" viewing or using entire screen estate to read web pages. And I always have problem with websites stating "best viewed with 1024x768 or higher resolution" (or similar).

Asking visitors to change their screen setting just to view someone's web site is extremely demanding, in my opinion.

Further, when they said "1024x768" resolution, they don't just mean the screen setting, but also imply that visitors use entire screen just for that particular web site.

That, I don't really understand the virtue of "QuickTime 7 Required" or forcing use of one player to watch digital video. And I always have problem with websites stating "QuickTime 7 required" (or similar).

Asking visitors to use QuickTime 7 over their own favorite media player is extremely demanding, in my opinion.

Further, when they said "QuickTime 7 Required", they don't just mean the codecs, but also imply that visitors use the very player just for that particular video.

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[Antony]

That, I don't really understand the virtue of "QuickTime 7 Required" or forcing use of one player to watch digital video. And I always have problem with websites stating "QuickTime 7 required" (or similar).

Asking visitors to use QuickTime 7 over their own favorite media player is extremely demanding, in my opinion.

Further, when they said "QuickTime 7 Required", they don't just mean the codecs, but also imply that visitors use the very player just for that particular video.

Please discuss QuickTime 7 issue in QuickTime thread, or start a new one.

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