On 20 10 2003 at 3:37 pm -0400, Kim Lerch wrote: >When we tested the application on 15" monitors in 800x600 resolution, the >application then had 3 vertical scroll bars. (If you have a 15" monitor, >you can probably replicate this). It was extremely difficult to navigate >through the Questions and Answers. > >We also found that if we selected long "category names" (in the left hand >section), an additional horizontal scroll bar was added. We were able to >eliminate the horizontal bar by careful selection of titles. However, in >future updates this may not be the case, and another scroll bar may be >introduced.
The problem with this is that you are making assumptions about which hardware and software the user will be employing. One of the fundamental tenets of the WWW is that you simply cannot make such assumptions. Did you test it on several browsers under all of Windows, Mac OS, KDE, Gnome? Did you try changing font sizes (many users employ custom stylesheets to either zoom or change fonts on their pages)? Did all of these browsers and combinations of user preferences yield precisely the same scroll bar combination? I hardly imagine so. This kind of design philosophy, where you pretend to know better than the user and make assumptions about their preferences and configuration, is silly. (It strikes me as a very Microsoft type of approach, which is mildly jarring coming from a company like Tucows.) -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
