Zikula Community

• dreamingmonkey
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Nov 25, 2007
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 166

  Posted: Jul 21, 2008 - 11:56 PM

  Hi all. Here's my situation. My computers are dinosaurs. My desktop is a 1GHz home-built box running Slack 12. My laptop cost me $500 from WalMart about 5 years ago. Needless to say, they're far from cutting edge. The best resolution I can get from either box (my laptop because of the cheap-o video card on board and my desktop because of a lack of good Linux driver support for my video card) is 1024x768.
  
  I know that's the current average resolution, but I'd like to be able to make sure that my sites look good at higher resolutions. Until recently, I've concentrated on developing sites with fixed-width themes, but my current project requires a more fluid approach so it's more of an issue with this one. And the issue only really came to the forefront for me because a friend of mine just had me go out and pick up a new flat panel monitor for her and set it up. I had no idea how badly some sites break down at higher resolutions (horrible trapped white space between columns and the like).
  
  Now, I'm a cheap guy. I don't want to go out and build a new box or buy a new laptop because, frankly, these haven't caught fire yet. That is, strangely, how most of my computers die. Of course, the electrician who wired up my office was recently indicted so that might explain something.
  
  Anyway, there used to be tools that would emulate browsers at different resolutions, generating jpg images of a site at different resolutions. I'm sure that some still exist and I was hoping that maybe someone would know of a good one.
  
  If not, I suppose I can go out and buy a new video card for my Linux box that has better driver support. I just really hate to crack the case because it never goes as smoothly as I'd like.
  
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• AmmoDump
  
  

  • Rank: Team Member
  • Registered: Dec 07, 2003
  • Last visit: May 09, 2010
  • Posts: 2703

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 12:10 AM

  http://browsershots.org/
  
  I prefer fixed width.. Fluid sites can look terrible at increasingly wide resolutions.
  
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  David Pahl
  Zikula Support Team

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• Simon
  
  

  • Rank: Legend
  • Registered: Dec 11, 2002
  • Last visit: Oct 21, 2009
  • Posts: 11674

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 12:16 AM

  I prefer fluid width, designed well (there's a difference). For example, the BBC News website (which people outside the UK may not frequent) used to really annoy me as it was stuck in the dark ages at 800px wide, less than half my current resolution width. That's a lot of wasted space when you have a big monitor.
  
  A better solution is like they have at zikula.de, which is fluid but does not get stupidly wide at large resolutions.
  
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• dreamingmonkey
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Nov 25, 2007
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 166

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 12:57 AM

  Quote

  
  A better solution is like they have at zikula.de, which is fluid but does not get stupidly wide at large resolutions.
  

  
  
  That's pretty much my goal. Most of my clients are infatuated with the whole Web 2.0 fixed-width blog look, so it's been smooth sailing for the past couple years. But I'm working on a news site with a ton of content and browser real estate is at a premium. A content-heavy news site just doesn't fit well in an 800px wide container.
  
  Anyway, thanks for the link, David. I'll give that a shot.
  
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  Help Now! Fast and affordable help for do-it-yourself webmasters from Wicked Viral :: Chicago's Only Web Development Firm Specializing in Social Networking Integration

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• craigh
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Jun 16, 2003
  • Last visit: May 29, 2010
  • Posts: 1966

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 01:35 AM

  the YAML templates might be a good place to start - the blanktheme project is a zikula implementation of this. I believe they have some fluid/max-width solutions.

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• AmmoDump
  
  

  • Rank: Team Member
  • Registered: Dec 07, 2003
  • Last visit: May 09, 2010
  • Posts: 2703

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 03:04 AM

  For me, I think that fixing the width under 1000px is realistic (960 is a mathematically magic number). My monitor at home is set at 1680px wide, fluid pages really start to degrade. Some sites that are that wide seem disconnected, and very ill-proportioned. I have a buddy who's monitor is well into the 2000+ range, sites just look wrong when they are fluid, left and right sides are in different zip-codes, Vertical spacing all shifts to the right. Sure you can set max boundaries, but why fuss. I send most of my time elimating variables and inconsistencies.. not trying to create them
  
  (Yup, I don't keep my browser at full screen on home PC, but most people do.)
  
  
  
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  David Pahl
  Zikula Support Team

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• espaan
  
  

  • Rank: Developer
  • Registered: Aug 23, 2003
  • Last visit: May 31, 2010
  • Posts: 1428

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 05:01 AM

  I like smart fluid design also. min-width and max-width. And indeed BlankTheme (and the YAML CSS-Framework underneath) support this already.
  I use it for example on my Track & Field site (which is not BlankTheme based, since it is PN 0.764 but pnThemeYaml). And for some pages (e.g. admin and photos) I set the max width larger to accomodate for these. Like Pagesetter admin needs some room
  
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  campertoday.nl, Module development, Dutch Zikula Community

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• dreamingmonkey
  
  

  • Rank: Softmore
  • Registered: Nov 25, 2007
  • Last visit: May 30, 2010
  • Posts: 166

  Posted: Jul 22, 2008 - 03:26 PM

  Well, I decided after all the talk in this thread about BlankTheme to download it and take it for a test drive. It's pretty cool. Definitely not for me, but I can see where you're going with it. It's a great idea. Other than a little trouble figuring out how to add submenu items, I found it to be pretty user-friendly.
  
  Anyway, that's off topic so I'll shut up and go back to work now.
  
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  Help Now! Fast and affordable help for do-it-yourself webmasters from Wicked Viral :: Chicago's Only Web Development Firm Specializing in Social Networking Integration

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