Web design--please help

F

fallout5

I'm having trouble maintaining a constancy of my website when viewed on
different computers. I do design on a monitor with 1920x1080 res and my site
looks huge and stretched on cpu's set to a lower res. Is there a way to fix
this? Is there a way I can get my site to automatically adapt to whichever
resolution it's viewed in?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
 
K

Kevin Spencer

This is one of the most difficult aspects of web development. HTML is a
markup language which is interpreted by a web browser on the client.
However, different computers use different screen resolutions, different
browsers, and different window and browser viewport sizes. As a result,
getting the page to look more or less the same is quite a task.

FrontPage has some settings which help (browser compatibility settings), in
terms of enabling and disabling certain features depending upon the target
browser(s). However, how size and layout issues are handled entails a number
of different possible strategies, all of which are supported by FrontPage.

The basic foundation of these is "liquid layout" versus "fixed layout."
Fixed layout involves using absolute pixel dimensions for a page. It is
simplest to implement, in that the layout never changes. However, it will
not stretch or shrink to the size of the browser window. It is quite
popular, however.

Liquid layout is characterized by using percentages to determine the size of
things. 80% of the width of the viewport is always going to be 80% of the
available space, regardless of the size of the viewport. It is more
difficult to implement, as there are quite a few considerations to think
about. For example, what is in a container such as a table cell or a panel?
If it is text, how does it handle overflow (being wider than the available
space)? If it is an image, it will not resize unless you write some
JavaScript or CSS to handle the resizing. And while the resolution may be
constant, the dimensions (relationship of height to width) are likely to
vary. It can, however, be done well.

Both approaches are quite popular, and as you browse the web you should be
able to identify many examples of both.

Another consideration is whether to use tables for layout. At the point in
your development where you are now, that is probably the best approach.

At any rate, while tools like FrontPage can make development easiER, they
don't (and can't) handle everything. As you can see, you have quite a bit of
self-education, experimentation, and experience ahead of you.

Be sure to get several browsers (at least FireFox and IE, which represent
the vast majority of browser types) for testing your pages, and try to view
them in different screen resolutions and with varying window sizes.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
Professional Numbskull

Show me your certification without works,
and I'll show my certification
*by* my works.
 
F

fallout5

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it.

Kevin Spencer said:
This is one of the most difficult aspects of web development. HTML is a
markup language which is interpreted by a web browser on the client.
However, different computers use different screen resolutions, different
browsers, and different window and browser viewport sizes. As a result,
getting the page to look more or less the same is quite a task.

FrontPage has some settings which help (browser compatibility settings), in
terms of enabling and disabling certain features depending upon the target
browser(s). However, how size and layout issues are handled entails a number
of different possible strategies, all of which are supported by FrontPage.

The basic foundation of these is "liquid layout" versus "fixed layout."
Fixed layout involves using absolute pixel dimensions for a page. It is
simplest to implement, in that the layout never changes. However, it will
not stretch or shrink to the size of the browser window. It is quite
popular, however.

Liquid layout is characterized by using percentages to determine the size of
things. 80% of the width of the viewport is always going to be 80% of the
available space, regardless of the size of the viewport. It is more
difficult to implement, as there are quite a few considerations to think
about. For example, what is in a container such as a table cell or a panel?
If it is text, how does it handle overflow (being wider than the available
space)? If it is an image, it will not resize unless you write some
JavaScript or CSS to handle the resizing. And while the resolution may be
constant, the dimensions (relationship of height to width) are likely to
vary. It can, however, be done well.

Both approaches are quite popular, and as you browse the web you should be
able to identify many examples of both.

Another consideration is whether to use tables for layout. At the point in
your development where you are now, that is probably the best approach.

At any rate, while tools like FrontPage can make development easiER, they
don't (and can't) handle everything. As you can see, you have quite a bit of
self-education, experimentation, and experience ahead of you.

Be sure to get several browsers (at least FireFox and IE, which represent
the vast majority of browser types) for testing your pages, and try to view
them in different screen resolutions and with varying window sizes.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
Professional Numbskull

Show me your certification without works,
and I'll show my certification
*by* my works.
 

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