3 resolution questions

[hamfast]

Hello guys

In the hand of an unexperienced web designer is a website designed to fill the full viewport more likely to suffer with problems with the range of screen resolutions that are available than one of those smaller looker websites that take up just the left or the centre of the screen?

And how best to check how your website is looking in different resolutions when you have only one PC/Monitor to test with?

Are there free css/html templates available that can be tailored to your own needs without the risk of running into resolution problems.


If someone could provide answers to any/all of these questions it would be great

Thanks very much
H

[jscheuer1]

I've always found it more challenging to fill the whole page, but as I do more work, I find myself doing just that. With me it is just a process of relaxing into it. Think of it this way - If the things on your page aren't too big, they can flow into the space available.

There are free templates, I don't use them, so I cannot rate them. However, no matter how you design your site, if you use elements with set widths in pixels and text with pixel sizes, you always run the risk of making things hard to view in some browsers on some computers. I go to the other extreme, often even giving image dimensions in em units so that they can shrink and grow with user text size settings.

The thing I have realized is that say the user has 800 x 600. Generally they will be viewing everything with 1 or 2 font sizes smaller than someone with 1024 x 768. The higher the resolution, the smaller things look, so now the user is increasing his or her text size. If you give text sizes in percentage, then all users can generally see things if they are not laid out too rigidly, because their native text size will make the text part at least flow into the space available on their monitor.

The best way to check different resolutions when one has just one monitor is to have a video card and utils that will allow you to even go above your screen's resolution, so that your screen becomes like a window onto a larger screen. I had that (came with) my last laptop and it was very nice. Failing that, you can always at least make your browser window smaller and decrease the text size to get an idea what people with lower resolutions are seeing.

[hamfast]

Thanks for the advice John. I think I've become fixated that these templates are an exact science with no flexibility. Very encouraging for me, thanks