Resizing to fit screen resolution

Question

I'm hoping for someone to be out there that could answer my
question as desperation will begin to settle in soon....
I have a website for some coursework I've been studying and
would like to present it in 800 x 600 pixels.
However it's actual size is 1200 x 800......does Dreamweaver
have any extensions that force a page to display in a certain size
even if that page is bigger than you want.
Help much appreciated at his late hour...
jonathan

Answer 1

Resolution is not the critical issue. Browser viewport width
is. To make
your decision you need to have some ideas about the following
issues -
1. What is the primary target demographic for this site?
2. What are the browsing habits of that demographic? Do they
normally have
their browser window maximized on the screen?
3. If they usually have their browser maximized, what is the
typical screen
width?
4. If they usually do NOT have their browser maximized, what
is the MINIMUM
screen width in that demographic.
5. How do I want to build the page?
a. Fixed width and left aligned?
b. Fixed width and centering?
c. Flexible to fill whatever width from left to right?
d. Flexible (within limits) and left aligned?
e. Flexible (within limits) and centering?
As you can see, this decision is probably much more complex
than you
thought, and will require that you know quite a bit about
your intended
target visitor and their browsing habits.
If you elect to go with 5a, or 5b, then your decision would
be - 'what is
the mimimum browser width I want to support without
horizontal scrolling?'.
Once you have determined that minimum supported width, all of
your decisions
are made. That's how wide you want your page to be.
If you elect to go with 5c, then you just build your page
within a flexible
container (the simplest example - although an obsolet one -
would be to use
a 100% width table to hold the entire page). Be aware that
pages with
limited text content can look VERY sparse and empty on wide
viewports when
built in this way.
If you elect to go with 5d, or 5e, then you would add this
sophistication to
your decision matrix -
'what is the greatest width I want to allow the page and its
contents to
become?'
In this case, you would use the CSS styles - 'min-width' and
'max-width' on
the primary page container. Just so you'll know, although
these styles are
well supported *now*, earlier versions of IE (and some other
browsers) will
not support them so reliably.
So - which is it? 8)
Murray --- ICQ 71997575
Adobe Community Expert
(If you *MUST* email me, don't LAUGH when you do so!)
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"brother_jonnycat" <[email protected]> wrote
in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm hoping for someone to be out there that could answer
my question as
> desperation will begin to settle in soon....
>
> I have a website for some coursework I've been studying
and would like to
> present it in 800 x 600 pixels.
> However it's actual size is 1200 x 800......does
Dreamweaver have any
> extensions that force a page to display in a certain
size even if that
> page is
> bigger than you want.
>
> Help much appreciated at his late hour...
> jonathan
>