Vent: Screen shapes/site shapes

artbaron

Azari wrote: »

Erm, so how do you manage to use your monitor for other programs? And sites that don't force content into a central ribbon?

Very easily. I have no problem whatsoever using my monitor for any application, hence my ironic post. I guess some people just need a little help with irony, don't let it get you down.

JReacher1

Azari wrote: »

'All device' or 'all major devices' is just the same in context. No part of what I said was relying on some weird and wonderful device with an odd screen size.

My post was

"Site designers will develop their site to cater for all major device types.

As you've said in your post there are lots of different sizes of screen and it will be impossible for a website to cater for all devices that may browse it."

You said i contradicted myself in these two sentances. This is not the case at all.

It does become the case if I had not said "major" devices. By ommitting this word it completely changed the point I was making.

Straw man arguments are not the way to operate on an internet forum.

Disagree with me all you like I have no problem with that. Make up words I have said for some perveted reason to argue makes no sense at all!

Geodark

Azari wrote: »

When I said 'will', I meant 'will' in the sense that if you code things properly it will use the available screen space to display things.

Only if you foul things up by trying to design for a particular screen size and/or shape will things get nasty.

And, yes, I do know there are times (forms, for example) when it is expedient to design making certain assumptions about the screen space to be used.

I don't think that is particularly true in all cases to be honest, in some cases yes but in some no - I work for a software company and some of our sites / applications will shrink and stretch, but others are designed not to due to UI/UX, accessibility and usability reasons. if you are entering data and field values then you really dont want the user to have to bounce right round the screen due to dynamic resizing. Although I have to say on screens like this what we tend to do is have them appear windowed rather than full screen.

szam_

Sheldon_Cooper wrote: »

Why is it that hardware manufacturers seem to insist the we get ever wider monitor. laptop, and tablet screens at the same time as most sites seem to think it's a good idea to display as a thin ribbon down the middle?

I'm yet to see a site with a massive disparity like this, however I must confess I prefer the centered 'clutter-free' sites rather than sites that fill up the entirety of the screen.

The MSE home site isn't responsive to mobile devices, but still uses a fixed width, so on a 1280 width monitor, would maybe look fine, but when you start on perhaps a 1900 width monitor (such as my primary monitor), you may deem a bit too "strip like" whereas I think it's just fine:

#container {
margin: 0px auto;
width: 1000px;
background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;
}

I don't design pages, but I modify styling of sites as part of work, so I'm not confessing to knowing everything about the design aspect, but you could absolutely cover the entire screen with content if you use widths at 100% and have thin borders and margins, but I'll be honest, it'd look like crap. So with that said, a lot of the pages I edit will always have a maximum width on the main container, and then use media queries at certain widths to make sure the page stays tidy and things move correctly when there is no longer space for it to look like it should.

Decent fully responsive sites will just use % and min/max-width combined with media queries to determine content positioning, and very rarely if at all use fixed widths, unless it is necessary to do so. I.e. 1000px maximum width, until it reaches, say 640px where it then becomes 100% width perhaps 2% on each side for "bordering" (or your could literally just add in border: 0em 2%.

On the other hand you could just create a script to target devices and use separate CSS or even redirect to a mobile only HTML page.

As I said, I'm not designer or developer - I just work with the stuff daily and just picking up bits here and there as I come across issues, research and fix them.

artbaron

Must say, I don't even get the discussion. Surely if a website is narrower than the browser window you either (a) resize the browser window (b) increase the display size using your scrolly mouse or (c) ignore the white space. My monitor has a horiz res of 2560 and I've never even considered it.

szam_

artbaron wrote: »

Must say, I don't even get the discussion. Surely if a website is narrower than the browser window you either (a) resize the browser window (b) increase the display size using your scrolly mouse or (c) ignore the white space. My monitor has a horiz res of 2560 and I've never even considered it.

Couldn't agree more - I don't understand why white space needs to be utilised 'just because' it's there. Plus it gives developers a massive headache to try and create various layouts based a huge number of resolutions. As I mentioned, I'm only on 1900 or so at home, Facebook as a prime example uses up about half the screen space on the content, in the middle of the page, I don't need it any larger as I can read it and what content would you put on either side anyway?

PLog86

JReacher1 wrote: »

My post was

"Site designers will develop their site to cater for all major device types.

As you've said in your post there are lots of different sizes of screen and it will be impossible for a website to cater for all devices that may browse it."

You said i contradicted myself in these two sentances. This is not the case at all.

It does become the case if I had not said "major" devices. By ommitting this word it completely changed the point I was making.

Straw man arguments are not the way to operate on an internet forum.

Disagree with me all you like I have no problem with that. Make up words I have said for some perveted reason to argue makes no sense at all!

There are "major" devices of all different shapes and sizes. Leaving out the word major makes no difference at all to what you said.

You are just coming across as a petulant drama queen!

There seems to be some substance to the OP's vent in that we are getting wider screens and yet we can't use the space we've paid for because some web designers seem to like to arrange their sites in a thin pole in the middle of the screen.

JReacher1

PLog86 wrote: »

There are "major" devices of all different shapes and sizes. Leaving out the word major makes no difference at all to what you said.

You are just coming across as a petulant drama queen!

There seems to be some substance to the OP's vent in that we are getting wider screens and yet we can't use the space we've paid for because some web designers seem to like to arrange their sites in a thin pole in the middle of the screen.

Cheers....

You're not clever enough to understand the difference between the phrase

"All devices" and "all major devices".

As an example to try and make it easy for you. A mini iPad would be classed as a major device. An HP touchpad would not be classed as major device.

My point was a website would be specifically designed and tested to make sure it would display on a mini iPad. It would not be designed and tested to make sure it displayed correctly on a HP touchpad.

Removing the word "major" made my argument appear to be be that websites would be specifically designed to ensure they worked correctly on every device.

This is not the case.

Most will work on the majority of devices but there will be a different customer experience based on which device the sites have been optimised for.

Anyway thank you for your post. I enjoy it when someone like yourself tries to get involved

Azari

JReacher1 wrote: »

Cheers....

You're not clever enough

Quite honestly, telling people who disagree with you that they are not clever enough to understand is just making you look like a rather unpleasant troll. Especially as you seem to be talking out of your backside.

As an example to try and make it easy for you. A mini iPad would be classed as a major device. An HP touchpad would not be classed as major device.

This is arguable, and irrelevant, anyway (what is important is whether two devices have the same screen size, not what they happen to be called. One of the fundamental things about the Internet is that it abstracts individual devices, something you would be aware of if you actually knew what you were talking about.

My point was a website would be specifically designed and tested to make sure it would display on a mini iPad. It would not be designed and tested to make sure it displayed correctly on a HP touchpad.

Again, you are talking nonsense. It may well be tested on an iPad mini but it's the screen size that's relevant, not what its called or who makes it. If it works on an iPad mini it will work on all screens of a similar resolution but may well not work very well on an iPad or iPhone.

Removing the word "major" made my argument appear to be be that websites would be specifically designed to ensure they worked correctly on every device.

Again, if you knew what you were talking about you would know that sites will tend to work on classes of devices with similar screens. Your obsession with 'major' is neither here nor there.

JReacher1

Azari wrote: »

This is arguable, and irrelevant, anyway (what is important is whether two devices have the same screen size, not what they happen to be called. One of the fundamental things about the Internet is that it abstracts individual devices, something you would be aware of if you actually knew what you were talking about.

.

This one statement proves you have no idea what you are talking about.

Screen size does make a difference but the browser is more important than screen size. A mini iPad would be on safari and the version of safari would be determined by the IOS of the ipad. I've no idea what a HP touchpad uses as its browser but I am guessing it's a bespoke browser for that device.

Websites will display differently on different browsers so when the site is regression tested it will be tested against the major browsers and devices and not against the less popular browsers or devices.

On the troll comment it makes me laugh when you deliberately altered my first post to make out I posted something I didnt. I worry this thread will end up like last time when you deleted all your posts and pm'd me an apology