Posted by Jonathan N. Little on 04/05/07 16:44

David Segall wrote:
> "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4art@centralva.net> wrote:
>

<snip>

>> I agree there are few sites that practice what they preach, but in
>> defense web authoring is still quite new, and just beginning to shed the
>> shackles of print orientation.
> I don't think they are "shackles". I believe they provide about 550
> years of experience in presenting text to the reader and the
> principles can, and should, be adapted to the computer screen.

What Gutenberg was doing was printing on *paper*. Paper has absolute
dimensions, a webpage does not! It is a different media. The same
transition when television was invented, the early shows tried to do tv
like radio, but it didn't really work. The "shows" had to change. Same
here with print media to web

>> I believe you will see more examples as
>> the concept sinks in.
> More? Do you have a URL for just one of those examples?
>
> I don't think that the "concept" is practical. I don't believe it is
> possible to use only HTML to design a site that meets a visitor's
> expectation of "good design" over the current range of computer
> monitors. By "good design" I only mean the general standard of
> presentation they expect to find from products on a newsstand.
>
> Your own web site, <http://www.littleworksstudio.com>, provides a good
> example of the problem. On our "wide screen" monitors there is too
> much of the stone background at the bottom of the front page and at
> 800x600 Firefox, at least on my set up,

So what? The content it framed in a solid readable background. The
marble is superfluous decoration. If you print the page, print preview
will do, there is no marble. In fact I have a different stylesheet for
printing that removes a lot of the "web" features that are meaningless
in print like link underlines and navigational elements. The printed
version gives the visitor what they want, the content! "The fact ma'am,
just the facts!"

> seems to have a vertical
> scroll bar that allows a visitor to scroll down forever without
> reaching the end of the page. Please don't take this is a critique of
> your site.

That's a bug in my JavaScript that governs the floating navbar. It only
occurs in a few specific situations, but I haven't bothered to fix
because I am think of restyling the site to have a horizontal navbar
where the submenus are easier to navigate.

> My own site <http://www.profectus.com.au> looks terrible on
> a wide screen because the right hand text is too wide and the heading
> image on most pages looks bad when it repeats.
>>> The text is far too
>>> wide to read comfortably and the menu at the top of the page is
>>> designed exclusively for a 1024 pixel wide monitor.

Well, that is not a good idea. You want your navigational strategy
usable regardless of the window size.

>> Ah, yes I have a large monitor as well, but nobody's got a gun to your
>> head forcing you to have your browser maximized at all times! I rarely
>> maximized my browser and I usually have more than one app going at
>> once...true multitasking. You can also bump your text size up a bit and
>> it will shorten the effect line length. IE users don't have a hot-key
>> for adjusting text size and rarely think to customize the toolbar to add
>> the button so that have a tendency to settle for whatever the browser is
>> set at.
> Of course a visitor can fix the look of a web site by adjusting the
> browser window. However, that negates the entire concept of "fluid
> design".

No it doesn't! The content is present regardless of the window size. If
the user changes the font the page is fluid and adjusts. A fixed design
would force horizontal scrolling, which must be a pisser on a cellphone,
or elements break-out and overlap which will destroys usability.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

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