[thelist] Screen Resolution, which to design for?

Mark Howells webdev at mountain.ch
Wed Jan 17 11:11:57 CST 2007


>> Or of course use the media parameter in STYLE definitions
>
> hope you'll pardon my ignorance: is this the 'simple and elegant'
> solution I referred to obliquely in a parallel email?

Quite possibly, though you'll have to refer to the person who wrote  
that for a definite answer.

> is this widely supported, a usable solution in the real world?

Media types of "screen", "print" and "handheld" seem to be supported  
in browsers that I've tested, certainly well enough in the desktop  
browsers which matter. Older mobile devices may perhaps not support  
CSS all that well, but that's getting back into the kind of territory  
we used to have to cover with Netscape Navigator and Internet  
Explorer 4. You'd be setting yourself up for an impossible task to  
test and debug in all possible mobile devices, though you may be  
lucky enough to find test reports somewhere online. There's a CSS  
support reference for older browsers at RichInStyle.com, which may be  
useful.

http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/table.html

The prime "rules" in all of this are more simple than a simple person  
dressed in a simple outfit attending a simple supper in Simpletown:

- People use websites to gain information. How the site looks is of  
secondary importance to that.
- Ensure that everyone who wants to access the information can do so.
- In designing for screen display, make the design work as perfectly  
as possible in the most commonly used screen-size and browser, whilst  
ensuring that nothing is hidden or inaccessible to others.

An example of the last point is at http://www.jungfrau-zeitung.ch/.  
The layout is optimized for 1024x768, and all that visitors at  
800x600 lose out on (without scrolling horizontally) is a banner  
advertisement.

Mark Howells
- www.permanenttourist.ch
- www.flickr.com/photos/mhowells/



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