For most sites, page delivery is static. That is to say, no matter who you are, no matter what the circumstances, you get the same page like any other visitor to the site.
In print media, everyone gets the exact same material, no matter who they are. Think of a brochure for a restaurant that gets stuffed into neighborhood mailboxes. It doesn't matter whether the homeowners have new or old houses, the latest mechanicals for their houses, or good or bad eyesight, or even if they're that "plugged into" the newest technology, they get the same brochure.
You could consider this brochure as a static entity. The occupants of the target houses aren't polled for any information that might warrant changing the brochure to fit their needs (say, print size). The brochure is the same for every person no matter what their problems or needs are.
Unlike our brochure, it's almost impossible to deliver a web page that appears the same to all viewers.
Think of a typical static web page. It may have some JavaScript running on it to provide what is essentially animation, or maybe form validation. Despite the use of client-side code, the page is static; the contents of the page are the same no matter who views it.
But its appearance changes depending on any number of circumstances. Below is a list off the top of my head noting the factors that may change a page's appearance.
Screen resolution and color are the two big problems that designers try to tackle right on the page. Element sizes should be set in percentages as opposed to pixels. This allows a page to expand and contract depending on the resolution. But are you really getting the same page at 800 versus 640? I don't think so. Not exactly, anyway. Text inside tables defined in percentages moves about depending on the screen resolution. It's pretty much the same from resolution setting to setting, but not exactly same.
Of course, the browser window size (what is properly called the viewport) depends on what browser toolbars and toolbars from other applications are filling the screen. It certainly depends on which browser you're using.
We all have heard of browser-safe colors. But how much does this palette really help to standardize a site?. I recently took a look at this site on a new machine running IE4.0. I must say that even the browser-safe colors were a little, well, off. The card? The monitor? Who knows? Another machine in the same office running IE5.0 resolved this site in brighter, more beautiful tones than my own machine. Which is "correct"?
Users mucking with default font sizes will change the appearance of a site dramatically, whether it's scalable or not. Let's face it, when a user blows up the text size in IE5.0 to largest when the resolution is set to 640, anyone's site is going to look very different. What about viewers messing with the monitor directly, either through software or the hardware interface?
We can take a little comfort in that most people run their machines at a certain set of settings. A large percentage of Internet users are newbies and run their machines at whatever the manufacturer sets them at. The belief is, generated from site statistics, that most people run their screens at 800 and have cards capable of supporting millions of colors, and predominately use Netscape 4+ or IE5.0 - depending on who you ask. You can take a certain amount of comfort in these numbers - if they are reliable - and if a new trend doesn't start to emerge.
But new trends emerge all the time - that's why they're called trends. It seems that monitors are now coming set at 1024, which pretty much seals how new users are going to view the web. A new trend, and now a new impetus to deign with two popular screen resolutions in mind, and not just one
Style sheets add fuel to this fire. They are hard to tame across browsers, as this site can attest to. If you make the administrative decision to go with a centrally located style sheet (sure, the style sheets are good for the artistic effect, but they serve a tremendous administrative function), your site will always resolve at least slightly differently in different browsers. More likely, the site will look very different across different browsers.
Even sticking with HTML3.2 will cause headaches. Netscape's default font appearance is larger than Explorer's. And heck, who says everyone has even the most popular fonts. Certainly Mac and PC users have dramatically different font collections.
Designers just aren't allowed the real control they want over pages. Popular design advice has seen to that. The techniques that afford total control over layout are considered bad design. Take something like font size. It's considered bad design to set font sizes by pixel. The idea is that users should be able to control their font sizes, and overriding their preferences leads to some kind of disaster, or at least poor usability. When I set out to control nested lists through style sheets, I found that only font size set in points or pixels gave me real control - fonts set smaller or larger were problematic, either because of the failings of the browsers or because of the logic of nesting the lists. The result? I wound of abandoning the idea of controlling the font size in the lists and instead let the browsers handle it. It felt like a cop-out, but I was sticking with established web design principles. I lost control over the design to present good design.
What to do? Well, let's just admit that the whole site-viewing thing is fungible, and then start from there. Let's just admit everyone gets what they get… not one view of the site, but some view that works pretty well for most people, and will look lousy to others running older or more esoteric browsers. Will anyone buy this response to design? The Usenet is full of postings from designers with the same story: They design a beautiful site for modern browsers but get chewed up by their client because he heard from a friend with Netscape 2.0 that the site looked bad. Does that user running paleoware deserve to see the site? The common response is yes. Mine is maybe. In either case, it's just impossible to offer that rare user the same page that almost everyone else gets.
Besides throwing up our hands (my response) and saying viva le difference, what can we do? Detection or sniffer scripts are already used on the web. Some site deliver pages especially made for certain screen resolutions and browsers. This allows designers the control that they want over the placement of each and every pixel. Knowing screen resolution and browser brand and version to dish up the appropriate page can let designers go back to controlling font size with fewer complaints from critics. It allows them to set elements like tables to a specific width, and not the looser percentage of viewing area.
But scripts are limited. You'll never see a script sniffing for Opera, or WebTV, or Mosaic, or Netscape3.0. They don't sniff for monitor support or brand, or default font size, or active toolbars, or anything else that can serious affect page design.
It's considered really bad design to put a button on a site that says, "Best Viewed With…" But in reality, that's exactly the case - a site is best viewed with one browser and one set of hardware and software preferences.
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| Free Site Tools | A webmaster's directory of free resources to help find about everything to build, maintain and promote your website. 1000+ Resources. |
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