Website and screen resolution

Viewers using 800x600 get tangled pages

[catluvr]

I published our website but several customers have called saying some of the page text is under the navigation bar. I know with 1024x768 resolution it looks great in IE6, but we can't tell customers to change their resolution! Is there a script I can put in the site to correct this? Help! What do I do?

Catluvr

[Staffa]

It is likely a problem less due to the resolution than to the browser rendering your pages.

Have you checked your pages in Netscape/Mozilla and Opera browsers?

[catluvr]

No I haven't. Can I load that many browsers on my PC?

catluvr

[Staffa]

Yes, you can. They all install in their own directories.

[tbear]

Are you using fixed sizes for your layout?
If so you might investigate using percentages instead. That way your pages will be more flexible.

[tedster]

Even more directly to the point, you can (and definitely should, IMO) test your pages in a window that is only 765 pixels wide or so -- either by running the browser at less than full screen, or by changing your own screen resolution. If you make this kind of testing part of your development process, it will help you accomodate the 30% of users who are running at 800x600

[topsites]

I agree with tedster, we need to continue designing our pages according to 800x600 for the time being...

[peco]

I design all my pages to 800x600 and center everything so it looks ok at 1024x768.
Is this acceptable or is there a better way?

[Tidal2]

There are still a lot of (big) sites who display at 800 pixel widths, that may vary with your target market though. If its aimed at visitors with older PC's certainly stick to it.

In my opinion centered text too improves the look generally.

[tedster]

For most situations, that is exactly what I do. I often design the template's graphical "trim" so that it fills out the entire screen with some design and color, but still keep the content area so that it displays well at 800x600.

A more complex approach, which I also use for some sites, creates a fluid page width -- so it works well for 800x600 but also expands to fill 1024x768. However, I don't like it when such a page expands indefinitely for any window size. This makes the text harder and harder to read as the lines get wider. So I also fold in some max-width to that kind of "recipe", including a work around for IE (because through version 6, IE doesn't support max width).

[Tidal2]

Tedster: It may be out of fashion but this is one reason I prefer to use tables, define a column width in the <td> area and it acts as a max width. Smaller windows are fluid unless you have a have a large image in the table which over rides it.

I have only tried this in recent versions of Firefox, Opera and IE6 so there may be problems with old browser though.

[catluvr]

There was only one page in the site that had a problem. I rebuilt it using 800x600 and now it looks great! I use tables also, but find I like layers for graphics. That way I can move them where I like.

Thanks to everyone for the replies.

Catluvr