A Dumb Page Width Question

[mark4man]

On my old PC, I authored a site; & adjusted the page width to accomodate the size of the monitor disaplay. My site looked great on every PC I ever veiwed it on (& yes...even the cheap PC's down at the local library.).

Now, I have a new machine; & moved up to a large size LCD monitor. Now, my site (& I've noticed many others, as well) have a "fixed width" look, whereby the pages are positioned full left, with a margin on the right.

Other sites, that appeared full width on my old monitor (17" CRT), also fill the screen on my new monitor (19" LCD.)

What's the trick?

Thanks in advance,

mark4man

[havik]

It's probably the screen resolution. Older PC's typically have a default setting of 800x600, whereas newer PC's have a setting of 1024x728 (these figures are in pixels).

So this means that pages that are designed to fit on a 800x600 will appear to be aligned left with a right margin on larger screen resolutions.

The fix here is to build your page with percentages, thus any change in the browser window size will result in a restructuring of the page.

Another, less effective way (I think so anyways), is to build separate pages for the most common screen resolutions and redirect the user to the one corresponding to their resolution.

Havik

[Nedals]

The size of the monitor is not the problem, but the resolution. A large number of sites use a fixed-width layout that fills the screen at a resolution 800x600, but leaves a margin to the right when viewed at 1024x768 or above. Newer computers are tending toward the higher resolution.

Hope that explains it.

[mark4man]

If I construct my pages to 1024 X 768, won't that have the inverse effect...i.e., wont the pages appear too large on older, smaller monitors; & have to be scrolled side-to-side to be viewed?

Thanks,

mark4man

[pyro]

As havik has stated, you need to use percentage widths. This is called fluid layout. What it will do is base the widths on the percentage of the browser, rather than pixels.

[havik]

You have a few options here so it depends on how you want to do it:

1) Size everything using percentages so that the page will size itself to any screen resolution.

2) Create different pages for each (or the most common) resolution and redirect the user to the appropriate page.

Havik

[mark4man]

...I'll do it!

I'm working in Dreamweaver, so I'll have to figure everything out from there...but it does make sense (percentages.)

Thanks again,

mark4man

[smoker2]

Or, if you are using tables, set the tables to align="center"
Then you can rely on always having the same visual effect.
Otherwise you can end up with large areas of blank space within your page, instead of around the edges.

[Kaisa]

I think they mean like this width="#%" height="#%"

# = Number
% = Percent

and i might try it myself after everything is up and running !