On 2012/05/21 17:56 (GMT-0400) matt1027 composed:
matt1027 wrote:
I've got a flexible page layout that uses a max width style to keep it from getting overly wide.
max-width: 980px; width:expression(document.body.clientWidth> 980? "980px": "auto");
I see now that I need to also have a minimum width because it "breaks if it gets too narrow.
Thanks for all the comments. I think I'm ready to convert my web sites to fixed width.
I have to use a max-width to keep the basic design intact and keep columns of text readable. And there is no way I can make it narrow enough to accommodate the small-screen traffic anyway, like 154x128 and 320x240. So I might as well just shoot for the middle of the road and make it simple. It seems to me that most of the major web sites I see are fixed width.
Simple middle of road is an illusion, if you're styling those widths in px. Sizing in px disregards user environment. As device pixel density (typically called "DPI") goes up, it takes more px to fill a given physical space, meaning sizes so specified shrink, easily into the difficult or impossible to use range. Zoom is no panacea. Not only does everyone not how to use it, it comes in more than one type, and the results vary by type and browser implementation.
http://fm.no-ip.com/SS/yahoodev-2560-144.png shows how DPI can impact a site one would think would be competently designed <http://developer.yahoo.com/>, but obviously isn't. The overlapping in the Firefox window there is a result of a combination of px width styling and browser enforced minimum font size (in this case set nominally to 83.3% of the browser's default setting; this minimum enforcement result is similar to "text-only" zoom, which in turn is equivalent to browser defaults being reset via user personalization to other than OEM sizes).
Contrast that to the lower left window, which by default "fixes" the width of the page wrapper to 99% of the viewport, with a 52em max-width; but provides a browser menu option to disregard actual viewport width <http://fm.no-ip.com/Auth/Sites/Ksc/>.
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