Different screen settings

different sizes = very different appearances

[textex]

I just looked at some of my sites from a friends computer that has setting of 1600x1000. My settings are currently 1024x768. To my shock some of my sites looked very different at the 1600x1000 setting. In fact some of the tables shifted over my background images, making the site look terrible.

How do I prevent this from happening?

[le_gber]

Hi texttext,

have a look at these:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

Hope this helps

Leo

[pendanticist]

Well, textex. It's been my experience that 800X600 is more optimal as most viewers tend to use these settings.

Pendanticist.

[textex]

What is the consensus? Should I build to suit 800 x 600?
Do I need to redo all of my sites? Is there a way to keep everything static across all setting sizes?

[grahamstewart]

Should I build to suit 800 x 600?

800x600 accounts for around 46% of page accesses at the moment.
1024x768 or higher account for about 50%.
Statistics from BrowserNews [upsdell.com]

So if your design only works on one or other of these resolutions, then you are missing out half of your audience.

Try using a fluid layout that adjusts itself to fit the page correctly (i.e. try specifying the widths of divs and tables in percentages)

[le_gber]

800x600 accounts for around 46% of page accesses at the moment.
1024x768 or higher account for about 50%.

800x600=46%
1024x768=41%

What you should do is design your site so they fit 800x600 and doesn't looks odd in 1024x768.

To test your site in different screen res, instead of changing the resolution of your monitor you can use javascript. Type in your browser address bar
javascript:resizeTo(800,600) or
javascript:resizeTo(1024,768).

Don't use a resize to bigger than your actual resolution it won't show anything.

Leo

[grahamstewart]

you can use javascript

Or check out the screen size favelets at [tantek.com...] (which let you add a button to your links bar that does the same thing).