🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Davis wrote:

>> Starting with the number of visitors who have their browsers at less than,
>> say, 700 px.
>> 
>> On the Superstats site, that's around 35%.  On the client site I mentioned,
>> it's 38%.  Check your client's site info, then ask the client if they're
>> willing to at the very least annoy that many visitors.
> 
> Again, is this the available space in the browser or the application window?
> I wouldn'y make any decisions based on that data AT ALL until that question
> is answered.

You should, and it doesn't matter whether the stats are the browser window
or available space.

The data is a clear indication that there isn't a 1:1 correlation between
monitor resolution and browser width, and that many surfers set their
windows based on their wants rather than on available space.  Sites like
yours that list only monitor resolutions implicitly communicate that
resolution is the more important issue in design, and it's not if you're
concerned about site usability.

I admit that getting monitor width is a bit tougher than getting the
resolution but it's still pretty easy.  The problem is that you can't
measure window width in IE until the window has loaded.

A reasonable workaround (if you feel you can't live with flexible pages and
simply _must_ serve different content to different-sized browsers) is to
load a blank page with code in the head that kicks in onLoad:

if (!innerWidth){
    innerWidth = document.body.clientWidth;
    innerHeight = document.body.clientHeight;
    ... now do something based on the above ...
    }

then use "innerWidth" in code that provides your custom content.  (My
personal choice is flexible pages, but chacun a son gout.)


> But why pick "700" anyway

Because there is a huge number of surfers with their browsers set that way,
so it serves as a good example of why it's not a good idea to design
fixed-width pages based on monitor resolutions.

[ ... snipped a whole bunch of stuff about how we can eventually force
surfers to maximize their browsers by creating larger fixed-width sites,
snipped because it ignores that fact that clients will quit hiring us if we
keep driving away a third or more of their visitors ...]


>> From which you can infer that hardly anybody is ever going to change their
>> window size for any Web site.
> 
> For any single site, yes - but they will change the size to ensure the best
> experience across MOST sites.

In truth, most sites are flexible rather than ego-feeding or novice-built
fixed sizes, so surfers will continue to set their browser sizes for their
own convenience, and avoid sites that expect them to change their behavior
for the designer's convenience.