Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As you can imagine, web designers have struggled with screen resolutions for years,
ever since 640 x 480 went out of style. They eventually diverged into two camps—those
who supported designing for one resolution (a “fixed-width”), and those who designed
for multiple resolutions (“flexible-width”). The fixed-width folks believe that the best web
design is one in which you are absolutely sure that all users are seeing your website as
close to the way you designed it as possible. This means picking a resolution, such as
1024 x 768, and designing your page to make use of that space (see Figure 5-1). If the
user has a larger resolution set, your page will simply have extra space at the sides, but
the tables and placement will remain where you want them, within your 1024-pixel width
(see Figure 5-2). If the user has—horrifyingly—a smaller resolution, then your content
will take up more of the screen than they have to give, and they'll be forced to use the
absolutely dreaded horizontal scroll bar for your page.
Figure 5-1.
An example of a Fixed-Width Webpage at 1024 x 600 resolution
