Comments on: The ultimate answer to screen resolutions for web design

By: Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor

Guilherme Zühlke O'Connor — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:28:15 +0000

Good points HERO, It’s handy to have a Devil’s advocate around.

By: HERO

HERO — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:46:03 +0000

Thank you for yet another interesting article G. I have to play devils advocate for a moment however and talk about the other side of the elastic layout card.

As an obsessive compulsive graphic designer I find myself driven by pixel perfection and although I’m not opposed to elastic layouts, I believe that creating a defined look and feel (in most instances) requires a reasonable degree of static control. Most sites just wouldn’t work visually if they were allowed to stretch the full width of my cinema display. The majority of content requires some amount of constraint to be visually appealing, even plain text.

I’ll be the first to agree that, there are certainly relevant uses for an em based design, but I think there will always be a solid place for pixel based design as long as designers are involved.

Just my 2 cents. I always enjoy what you have to say. Keep the great work coming.

By: guioconnor

guioconnor — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:45:32 +0000

@Damien Oh - I think javascript is a beautiful and great tool that is underused. Well, at least for nice things, because if used instead for all kinds of POP-ups and other nasty techniques.

While not quite advanced with javascript myself, I do know half a dozen pieces of JS code that do great things and are not longer than a dozen lines. It’s sad is not being used more often.

@Adam Snider, @Landon, @Michael Martine - Technically speaking nothing of this is hard to accomplish for a competent web designer, the actual problem, IMO, is the monkey see, monkey do attitude so often present with the so called web designers.

The big problem with this profession is that is a self-proclaimed profession. Many people say they are web designers before they actually understand what that is.

Not that is easy at all to define that. This blog is, in part, a quest for an answer to that, yet the problem is call oneself designer based in the ability to mimetize something that has been done, instead of creating, because the very spirit of a website can’t be copied by copying the visual.

Designers that “make up” philosophical reasoning to justify what they are doing and not otherwise are the ones to blame for the websites filled with web 2.0 crystal graphics and a 20th century concept.

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 15:58:56 +0000

@Landon: That is really pathetic. I can’t believe how many people call themselves web designers and don’t have the slightest clue about user interface design, business, or customer service. But their clients are so ignorant that they happily pay them.

By: Landon

Landon — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:23:17 +0000

When I worked at an interactive web agency, it was amazing how many of our employees simply said, “If their computer has a lower resolution that the website, it’s their problem.” Many times, it was the graphic designers that had to have their site look the way they wanted it, and us coders would have to go along with their choice.

I agree that making a website flexible for platform changes is the way to having maximum usability in all web mediums.

By: Adam Snider

Adam Snider — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:37:44 +0000

Great advice, Zo’C. I’m not a designer myself, but the principles here are pretty basic (not sure if the code is basic, but the ideas are), and I’m surprised more designers don’t build websites with this in mind.

By: Damien Oh

Damien Oh — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:51:23 +0000

Being a programmer and web designer, I fully understand what you are stating in this post. There is always the problem of setting the correct size to suit all resolution. A way to overcome this is to use CSS “div width;100%”, but that would cause the site to be elongated for some of the user with high resolution. Using javascript to detect browser resolution and capabilities would be a great idea.

By: guioconnor

guioconnor — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:59:25 +0000

@Michael Martine -

…unless a user accesses the same site from two different resolutions, she will never realize what has been done. She will only know the site is clear and readable.

Brilliant, Michael! This is a point I’ve been defending for a long time now. It is all about the accessibility.

It doesn’t matter what other users see, it matter that a specific user using a specific navigation paradigm (through the choice of browser, connection, device) has an adequate navigation experience for her choice.

By: Michael Martine

Michael Martine — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:57:03 +0000

Great points, Guilherme. This one small “extra mile” step is important, even though unless a user accesses the same site from two different resolutions, she will never realize what has been done. She will only know the site is clear and readable.