Posted by dorayme on 10/14/06 23:38

In article
<0001HW.C1571F08001B1195B019F94F@News.Individual.Net>,
patrick j <patrick@jamesnews.orangehome.co.uk> wrote:

> I don't like the text to be spread right across the browser window and
> setting "hard" margins is too inflexible.
>

If it is (especially) text only article that is being displayed,
one can use, eg. "width: 35em" which IE understands fine, no need
for any special instructions. And this will be fine for most
people. This is regarded as being not "fixed" but "fluid" because
of the em (which is dependent on the user's text-size setting for
the browser)

I experiment with max-width in these things sometimes to try to
overcome the shortcomings of even this. Take a look at what
happens when you put in the reasonable 35em for width (not
max-width) and pretend to be tired and want to sit back in the
chair and read it big... it can develop horiz scrollbars! It is
this sort of thing that can be stopped with max-width, this sets
a limit. And if you want this feature in IE, you need to do
special things. But you could take the attitude that the em based
width (no max-width) is good enough flexibility and if the user
uses an inadequate browser, then you are not going to jump
through hoops to add all the refinements for the few who would
want huge text size AND yet uses IE 5 and 6. Depends on how much
you care, how much you can be bothered.

> On the Mac of course the browser does not fill the screen in that
> manner as a default behaviour.
>

In some ways I have admired watching some expert PC users doing
all at full screen, using the equivalent of our silly dock to
switch about and so on... I have a PC and sort of understand it
but am too stuck in my Mac ways and like windows to be as
reasonable as the site calls for and no more...

--
dorayme

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