Re-sizing for different resolutions

[Guest lcramer53]

First of all, I've been reading through this site and feel that everyone is truly helpful, and I need some help/direction.

 

I know a little bit about html, can understand the source code a little bit, but mostly use Dreamweaver CS3. Anyway, I just finished re-building a site with close to 100 pages and used CSS for the first time. The site is up and looks good to me. But, a friend of mine told me that she looked at it on her home computer and "the whole right side of the screen is missing.." blah, blah, blah.

 

Well, I understood enough to know that she must be viewing in an 800x600 resolution (I built the site at the 1024x768) and because I didn't want the sideways scrollbar to show up, I used the code: overflow-x:hidden on the css page and it worked great... until I heard from my friend. So, I took out the overflow and now, the sidways scrollbar is back, particularly if viewing the site at a resoution lower than 1024x768 and I think that looks really unprofessional.

 

Do I have to re-build the whole darn site to have the page re-size to everyone's resolution setting and browser type. I'm really, really, really ready to cry here.

 

Thank you,

 

Sue

[Susie]

Welcome, Sue. I completely understand your frustration and we'd love to help. Can you give us a link to your site so we can check it out?

[falkencreative]

99.9% of all sites I build are intended for 1024x760 or larger screen resolutions. At smaller resolutions, yes, a scroll bar will appear -- that's just the way that the web works.

 

According to http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp about 4% of users are using 800x600, and the rest use larger screen resolutions. I figure I have to cater to the large majority of my audience, and 4% is a low enough number for me to safely ignore (well, not ignore, but as long as they can still see my content, they should be fine.) Take a look at your web stats, because they may give you an indication of the percentage of the viewers of your website that still use 800x600.

 

There are a couple ways you could go here:

-- Accept that about 4 or 5 percent of visitors, your friend being one of them, may see the site with a horizontal scrollbar. Yes, it will look slightly unprofessional, but you can't cater to absolutely everyone's resolution setting/browser type.

-- Rebuild the site to use a 800x600 resolution (but realize that users who use larger screens will see a very small site)

-- Rebuild the site to use a fluid layout that resizes based on the users screen size. This can be tricky, especially with browser rendering differences.

 

Personally, I'd suggest just accepting that a small minority of users will see a scrollbar.