Screen Resolution Settings

[spober at manhattan.edu]

I've been wondering about using Cascading Style Sheets, and viewing your
test page gives me very convincing reasons NOT to.  The design is quite
nice in Netscape 4.6 but in 3.04 it's, well, legible but nothing more. 
True, it's not scrambled or weird in 3.04, but you lose so much of the
quality it's amazing - no fonting sizes,  graphic and the initial table
is a horizontally displayed assortment of links.  Looking at it in IE
v.3 you keep the fonts and colors but somehow I can't load the graphic
and the first table is displayed as in Netscape 3. 

I can't speak for the Internet world as a whole, but at my institution,
I see migration to new software in general, including upgrading browsers
is a very slow process. I have to assume that there are still version 3
browser users out there. (Actually, it's moer than just an assumption
since I still get questions on how to set up preferences for v.3
browsers from our faculty.)

Anyway, speaking of compatibility issues, I have found that an awful lot
of people don't ever look at the display options and are running their
expensive top of the line Pentium systems at 256 colors.  I don't really
design for 256 colors, though I do often check my pages in that mode
just to be sure everything is readable.   

Stacy Pober, Information Alchemist
Manhattan College Libraries
spober at manhattan.edu

web4lib at webjunction.org wrote:
> From: Thomas Dowling <tdowling at ohiolink.edu>
> Last time around, I wasted a little time trying to see if current
> browsers could handle a page whose dimensions were stated neither in
> percentages nor in pixels, but entirely in text-based measurements.
> Regardless of screen size, window size, or resolution, the only
> assumption this page makes is that the user's configurations combine to
> make a sensible line length for reading.  I'm not entirely convinced
> that this could be a primary design model for web sites, but it does
> take into account the fact that line length (measured in ems) is an
> important factor in comprehension.  It's also a relative measurement
> (unlike pixels), but relative to the text people are reading, instead
> of to the artifact of the window (unlike percentages).
> 
> The result was pretty successful for an hour's work (my apologies to
> the folks whose content I ripped off for the experiment--you know who
> you are).  With some CSS tweaking, the results were comparably rendered
> in IE5, NC4.5, and Operas 3.6, and as with most good CSS writing, it's
> perfectly legible in non-CSS browsers.  At the very least, it's a
> reminder that resolution-independent writing really can work.
> 
> So, for what it's worth, it's at
> <URL:http://maroon.ohiolink.edu/foo/>.
> 
> Thomas Dowling
> Ohio Library and Information Network
> tdowling at ohiolink.edu