Forum Moderators: not2easy
The banner is fine in IE6 when viewed on my PC with 17´monitor but when viewed on a laptop (15´inch) and a monitor with 19 inch it only stretches 75% across.
I have tried to play around with width size and other things but to no avail.
Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Richard
[edited by: SuzyUK at 11:22 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2008]
[edit reason] Please No URI's [/edit]
Sounds like you're using pixel-based width measurements instead of percents. The problem is likely that you're looking at your site on computers that are set to different screen resolutions. My guess is that your 17" monitor is set to 800x600 and the others are set to 1024x768. Check the display settings for each computer and make sure they match, change them if necessary, then check the webpage again.
[edited by: MatthewHSE at 8:45 pm (utc) on Jan. 22, 2008]
The reason different computers are viewing it differently, is because of resolution. All normal images(called raster images) consist of pixels to create their image. Thousands or millions of pixels are often involved, making the image look bigger or smaller. With computer monitors, they display different numbers of pixels per real life measurement (such as an inch), making the image seem larger or smaller, due to the fact it displays less pixels (and for the same or larger size screen, that means bigger pixels). Resolution is often customizable though... from 800x600pixels to 2048x1536, or even more, depending on the monitors.
Another issue is that even people with high resolutions may experience limited viewing space, because it depends on the window size. If the person's browser window is small, they will still have the banner image cut off, even if they are at a high resolution (this is because the window only takes up a portion of all the pixels the monitor displays).
Without distorting the image, there is no way to always fit an image to the same size of the window, or always ensure it can fit in a window. That is why it's best to design in a flexible manner, such as making it so that it gets cut off, or has a scroll bar, if the window is too small. The choice between the two is a designers choice depending on the content. You never want real content to be cut off, but something for display which is large would be of little consequence to cut off.
Other than that, you can ensure your content is never wider than about 770pixels, ensuring that it will fit in the smallest screens. The only problem with this is that there are actually screens/windows smaller than 800x600, such as handheld devices, or people set at 800x600, but their window doesn't take up all the screen, and they don't know how to resize it. Generally, it's not an issue though, and it's not common where you'd need a banner wider than about 770 or 1000 pixels (1000 is the next step)
In the future, there will be a thing called vector graphics. They exist somewhat today, especially in flash (the only problem with flash, is it isn't the most accessible, and requires a plugin), but are not yet very practical. These are designed without respect to pixels, so they can fit without degrading in quality. One thing about vector graphics though, is that it only draws cartoon-like images. It would be impossible (with our current knowledge/technology) to do such a thing with fancy images like real life pictures, or images made in Photoshop, etc.
[edited by: Xapti at 9:25 pm (utc) on Jan. 22, 2008]
