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screen resolution and browser variation

I hate those messages "This site is optimised for 800x600" etc etc. To me, they reek of a web developer who's come from a print background and just can't give up trying to control their page layout.

The problem with trying to control page layout is that you're doomed to fail. People have a wide variety of monitor sizes from 15" to 21" and set them to a wide variety of resolutions. This used to be driven predominantly by limitations of peoples' systems, but although that's no longer such an issue there are other reasons for the variety of settings people use.

For example, the fastest growing demographic on the web are the Baby Boomers, and a lot of them are approaching retirement age. Sure, their 17" screens can technically cope with 1024x768 pixel resolution or higher, but chances are that their eyes can't! Even if they set their computer to "large text" a lot of websites insist on embedding their text as graphics, which means it won't show larger, even if the computer is set to "large text" - because as far as the computer's concerned, it isn't text. (Note: we covered the "text as graphics" issue in the Font chapter if you're wondering what I'm talking about there). So what I'm getting at is that there will ALWAYS be a pool of people with their screens set to relatively low resolution, so everything's big enough for them to see.

At the other end of the spectrum, there will be high-end users with huge screens, perhaps even running a double-screen system, who want to fit as much as possible onto their screen at the same time - they'll be at very high resolution.

Any attempt to make the user-experience consistent for these two groups is FUTILE. "Resistance is useless...." You have to learn to let go, to make adaptable layouts that will be at least OK at any screen resolution. How Zen.

The other issue is browser variation. Although it's not as much of an issue as it was back in the 1990's "Browser Wars" era (For those of you living under a rock at the time, Microsoft won, Internet Explorer now has about a 95% market share and Netscape went under. *sniff*). There are still variations worth considering, though. For example, the gamma (colour contrast) is very different on Macs vs PCs.

Also, the proportion of a screen taken up by the Browser's own navigational elements is much higher in Windows XP and Mac OSX (in their default settings, anyway) than most other systems. That means less room for your website within the browser. Tough luck!

Just take a deep breath and repeat to yourself, "It's beyond my control..."