I'm having a problem with a website I've built: whenever I view the site on a smaller monitor or when I resize the browser window, the content gets covered by the other divs. I need the content to be fully visible, no matter what size the browser is.
http://sophisticateddesign.nl/cfreport/overons.html
Also, on the homepage the text gets cut off a little bit on the bottom row when I resize the browser. I need this row to increase in height a bit, which apparently can't be achieved by simply increasing the divs' height.
http://sophisticateddesign.nl/cfreport/index.html
You should take a look at responsive web design. By using a fluid grid together with one or many media queries you can achieve what you're asking for.
Here's a good introduction if you'd like to get started. I can also highly recommend Ethan Marcotte's book about the subject!
The simplest way is not to define widths in pixels but using only width in %. You defined for example width: 960px; for <html> so if the browser window is less than 960px the whole content of this site won't be visible. You also defined the footer width and probably some more elements.
But the true is nowadays you should learn rather Responsive Web Design to create your page adjusting to device width. Many sites are being used by people on PC, laptops, tablets and mobile phones and you cannot create complex site to look nice on all those devices without using responsive design techniques.
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I am currently trying to build a personal profile page. It's a work in progress, and I know little HTML, but I'm getting there.
I'm having an issue with my webpage with regards to how it scales with changes of the browser window size. On my (quite wide) screen at university, it looks fine. However, reducing the browser window size manually - or simply viewing it in a full size browser window on a smaller screen - appears to mess everything up - it doesn't look very nice. Text goes close to my pictures, and it all looks a bit tatty.
I think this is probably because my design is quite poor.
1. Is it because my design is bad or is there something else I'm doing blatantly wrong?
My current idea for a solution is to resize things so that they would look more reasonable on a smaller screen (i.e. on a normal sized laptop). I'm worried that this might end up making things look a bit odd on a bigger screen, though.
2. Is it possible/within reason for a beginner to have two different designs, one for smaller screens and one for big screens, which could be detected and then utilised depending on what screen size viewer is using? Should my page be designed to simply work with whatever screen size?
3. If I do reorganize the page such that it works better with smaller
screens, is there a way to "lock" this design in place, so that it
doesn't get messed up if someone views my page in a wider window?
Perhaps a way to ensure that only the boundaries of the page increase
in width?
What I'm essentially asking is how I should go about designing my page in order to resolve the evident issue - where the issue is that it looks rubbish when the browser window is any smaller than the max size of my screen at university.
You've created your page using tables. It is not a good practise nowadays exactly due to the problems your are facing. In practise, tables should not be used for layout purposes.
To make your layout fluid it'd be better to develop using div with float and relative positioning.
You can see another discussion related to this topic here
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/6036/why-arent-we-supposed-to-use-table-in-a-design/6037
You could use css property #media, to handle different styles for different screen width: https://www.w3schools.com/cssref/css3_pr_mediaquery.asp
I need to put together website for mobile devices, so iPhones and various androids. The problem is I struggle with getting viewport right and other settings. My goal is so webpage would be coded for specific width e.g. 640px wide. Then once open device would zoom it in/out to the width of the screen so everything became larger or smaller same like after zoomig in/out via pinching on the device screen.
So I would like to develop it for lets say 640px width and depending on device it would scale up or down once open. So if device screen would be 960px wide it would automatically scale to this width via viewport somehow. Is this possible at all to have it coded for predefined width in css and have zoomed in/out as needed by device itself?
I apologize if the question is too generic, will explain details if needed.
EDIT:
So the most common approach if I understand correctly is to provide few layout versions for most commons screen sizes? Using media queries in css provide different values for widths, fonts sizes etc is that right?
If I decide however to go with percentages rather than media queries, given the design provided I think still would have a problem with resizing fonts as layout has images with text in it and text needs to be proportional to the image. Also percentages would take care of widths, height might be an issue though as the images would have to be resized vertically too. Some parts of the design would need to "fit" each other it seems and it would become problem I think.
Now if I simply build a website of certain width, lets say 640px I should be able to position everything on the screen with pixels, no diffeent from normal non-mobile website.
So I tried to set <meta name="viewport" content="width=640"> and inside of a page set width of widest container in css to 640px making page width 640px basically. If I understand correctly it will set up viewport to exact width of the page. So the page would be build as any other non-mobile webpage. User will have to adjust scale by pinching as when the page opens it is usually zoomed in/out for some reason. Is my understanding of what is happening here correct or is there some problem with it. Having it predefined size takes care of different mobile screen sizes as viewport is always same, fits into page width and only scale seems the problem, that is unless I'm missing something here.
I also should have mentioned that I need to do only portrait and make it only option, so no landscape view (that will be another question).
Would love to know your thoughts and I appreciate all the answers so far.
This is called Responsive Web Design when a website adjusts according to screen size...
You can make this kind of responsive website easily through CSS3 Media Queries:
How to write CSS Media Queries for common types of devices
Responsive Web Design: What It is and How to Use It
If you google for Responsive Web Design you will find lots more information on this topic. It's really an amazing method to make your website look great on all devices from small to large screens.
We have a series of tutorials on creating web pages using responsive web design. If you want a quick introduction to it checkout Introduction: Creating a Responsive Web Design, it lists common mobile phone and tablet sizes, so it might lead you to the answer you need. You can find the link to our tutorial series in the article. The solutions provided use Bootstrap in order to provide easy to create pages. And it also provides free samples of responsive web design pages.
I hope this helps to provide the answer that you need, if not, then please let us know if we can provide any further assistance.
Regards,
Arnel C.
InMotion Hosting Community Support Team
Specify the width in percentage say width=100%,which automatically adjusts the width with the screen.
Regardless of whether it is HTML, XHTML or HTML5 you find those annoying percentages littered throughout the place. Yet... I see an awful lot of websites dare not go near them. Yet I was always encouraged through uni to use them.
So which should I be using? Which would lead to better site design and why?
I'm aware to avoid the use of height although HTML5 really doesn't like me not specifying height if I want to use percentages.
Thanks for taking the time to read.
It really depends on what you do you want to build up.
Sometimes I need to build a website which could be read by people with certain disabilities. If for example also older people visit your site its good to use % so that they could zoom in your page and the layout still looks pretty.
Fixed Design Layouts Fixed design layouts have a specific width and do
not scale to fit the browser window. Websites that make use of it can
be aligned to the left, centre or even aligned to the right as and
when required.
Benefits of Fixed layouts: With fixed design layouts you have control
over the line length, flow and placement of the elements on the web
page. The designer has a fixed space to work with and the line lengths
of the text and the placement of images can be designated easily.
Drawbacks of Fixed layouts: Fixed design layouts tend to leave lots of
empty space on either side of the design when viewed on high screen
resolutions. This dwarfs the size of the web page and gives an
impression that it is floating on the screen.
Fluid Layout Fluid design layouts use percentages instead of pixels to
define their width and they fill the entire browser window. They are
also called fixed or dynamic designs.
Benefits of Fluid layouts: One of the major benefits of fluid design
layouts is their accessibility features. They cater to more number of
users. This is because, whatever may be the screen resolution or
device of the user, fixed design layouts adapt better. It makes use of
the entire browser window by spreading out. This maximizes the area
for the content to e displayed and more information can be seen at one
go. Therefore, there is no empty space on the window screen. This is a
better bet as compared to fixed layouts that leave a great deal of
empty space.
For fonts, you should use percentages (or em's, or rems) if you don't wish to fix the font size in Internet Explorer. If you use pixels, then users of Internet Explorer who change their default font size in their browser settings won't see the fonts increase/decrease. So this makes your text potentially less readable for users in that browser.
A great resource for this is the first chapter of Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design.
For layout, using percentages or em's will make your design more flexible to changing font sizes/localization etc. This is also covered in the book.
I am attempting to create a webpage formatted to fit the width of all screen
sizes (or resolutions).
In other words, I want to format the width of my page in such a way that anyone who views it will not have to use a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the screen.
So far, I have found no help on this topic.
Well, there are several approaches. One would be to use ems/percentages for your widths thus achieving a fluid design that adopts to your users screen resolution. The other is to have several css sheets for different widths and call them based upon a screen resolution check from a simple js code.
The first one is a bit harder, but yields good stable results. On the other hand, (as a designer) it kinda restricts your creativity a bit.
It seems to me like the latter is more widely used. Nowadays, 3 different stylesheets will suffice for most devices around the world. One around 900px will cover somewhat older screens, one around 1160px will handle the larger and more modern screens, and one for mobile devices(sorry, no idea on approximate width) should do the trick.
The way you're asking this question, not only will the width of the body have to be 100%, but the width of its the child elements will also have to be in percentages.
The only way to achieve a scalable web page is by avoiding fixed sizes. Of course that presents problems with text since it will attempt to wrap it on the following lines, so you must either specify a minimum width or combine it with a pre tag with overflow: hidden so that it won't affect your page layout at the expense of simply not being able to read the text.
Fortunately, you can easily test your page by simply shrinking your web browser to smaller resolutions and seeing how it pans out.
I am developing a website.
I heard that it is best to have a website with a fixed width.
What possibly could be the best fixed width I can allocate to my website ?
As Yahoo says:
* #doc - 750px centered (good for 800x600)
* #doc2 - 950px centered (good for 1024x768)
* #doc3 - 100% fluid (good for everybody)
* #doc4 - 974px fluid (good for 1024x768)
I recommend using yahoo styles and follow their advice.
Another helpful resource is Display Browser Statisics from w3schools.com.
While I agree to a point with those who say variable width has its benefits, I find that unless there is significant content, when a site stretches the content winds up looking pretty sparse as it's stretched out to wider widths. It's for this reason alone that many of my client request fixed-width skins. Keeping a site narrow can help frame the content and maintain a more 'constant' appearance (when that's a concern). Usually, when designing fixed width sites I use the stats over at the W3C for the most popular resolutions. Currently, I've been designing with ~980px wide, this allows for 1028 wide, with scroll bars and some background to still be seen. However, I am noticing a shift in statistics towards wider resolutions as more people adopt wide screen monitors.
However, it really does come down to what you feel is a good fit for the site, content and client.
960 Grid System argues that 960 pixels is a wise choice since the number has so many divisors. I am not sure that I agree, but they sure have an impressive list of demo web pages on their site.
You can find a link to a fluid alternative at the bottom of the page.
In my experience the fixed vs. fluid debate seems to be a designer vs. programmer discussion. Designers generally prefer a fixed layout because that will give them more control, while programmers generally prefer a fluid layout because that will let them choose the width they want, by setting the width of the browser window.
Ideally your website should scale with the width of the screen resolution. But that is difficult in most of the cases. Since most of the users still use 1024x768 resolution, so any width such that all the content appears on such a screen without needing to scroll is a good width.
Where did you hear that? A website with a fixed width comes with the problem that it (most times) only looks good where the screen suits the width. Think of a website with a fixed width of 768px, how would that page look on a resolution of 1920x1200?
You should develop websites that scale with the browsers resolution.
Here is a little hack that might come in handy. On the larger screens I find that not having a 100% width is good as the amount of horizontal eye scrolling is more than what is comfortable. About an A4 or foolscap page is what people like their content width to be.
However on very small screens if you set your width to 70% or 80% you will be wasting valuable screen resolution. So workout what is the smallest width in pixels that you will allow - for argument's sake let's say it is 800px.
Create a 1x1 pixel image the same color as your background. Then put this image into your content pane (div, table whatever you are using for layout) but set width="800px" height="1px", this will force your content to always be at least 800px wide but not cover the fullscreen on resolutions that have width greater than 800px.
As I said it's hack, and it may or may not be exactly what you were looking for.
Because websites can appear in any number of browsers, on any number of devices, at any number of resolutions, (phone, netbook or cinema screen?) a fixed width is a kludge. Kludges can work, but it would be better to design for a purpose, instead of deciding on some arbitrary rules and then sticking to them without really knowing why.
Don't just go with 1024px because most people can handle that in most cases. Know what you're trying to achieve, and use that to inform your decision.
So, who're you targetting, and what do you want them to do?
This kind of question really has to do with theming/templating and if you are using a CMS like drupal (and many others) can be flexibly handled to provide you anything you want. Fixed or fluid - whatever. You even can let your users decide.