Automatic screen size

[derventio]

Automatic Screen Size Hi, I am planning on uploading my site on monday but need to know how to make sure that my site expands or contracts to fill the viewers screen size. I dont want people having to arrow to the side. I would be grateful for a quick answer. Thanks.

[jont]

This depends on which layout / theme you have implemented. It is best practice to design your pages to fit 750 pixels in width as the minimum and then expand to fit the viewers screen.

This is generally done by not specifying a cell width in your main layout table so it will expand to fit. If you have say a 3 column theme you could have the table set to 100 per-cent and the 2 outer columns to say 175 pixels in width - leaving the centre column where the products appear in the middle with no width specified - as the width of the browser window increases the centre column will expand to fit.

Make sure you also check your layout in Mozilla and Firefox browsers as they can sometimes render slightly differently than with Internet Explorer

[garyhay]

If you look at sites like Yahoo or www.lornasmith.com at a screen size bigger than 800 x 600 you will see that they have plain areas at both sides.

You have to decide if you are willing to have this happen or if you always want to fill the browser window using a 100% table.

The advantages of keeping a fixed size are that you will know how the content of the site will look but your text will stretch if you have the page resize like it does on this this forum page. If your text is sitting next an image you may end up with text going all the way across the screen making it difficult to read (books are made at a size that makes them easy to read without moving your head).

Hope that helps you out somewhat

[jont]

You have to decide if you are willing to have this happen or if you always want to fill the browser window using a 100% table.

The advantages of keeping a fixed size are that you will know how the content of the site will look but your text will stretch if you have the page resize like it does on this this forum page.

To get the best of both worlds you need to look at using nested tables, this will allow you to span the screen but will also constrain your design to retain layout formatting to appear just as you intended it

[LDTV]

How though...

I would be interested in implementing this on my companies website - www.ldtv.co.uk - but I have no idea how to. Can anyone here give me a few steps on how to do what the above post is suggesting?
Thanks
Jon - LDTV Webmaster

[garyhay]

What do you wish to do?

[LDTV]

span the screen but will also constrain your design to retain layout formatting to appear just as you intended it

If this is naot plausible, or just very complicated (lol) then I would be just as happy to know the way that you make actinic resize the page to the persons screen size.

Jon

[garyhay]

I dont have usually have a resize. I would rather have a layout retained as it was meant to be.

[jont]

Hi Jon,

looking at your site the minimum size of browser before the horizontal scroll bar kicks in is 875 pixels. This is arguably OK in the curent climate with most people viewing at 1024 pixels. The left hand and right hand side columns are a fixed width and the centre expands to fit - as per the previous posting in the thread.

You could change the ACTSWIDTH setting in DESIGN | OPTIONS | SHOP DEFAULTS to a smaller setting to allow the browser to shrink down further still if you are concerned about maximum accessibility.

[Ben Colman]

Matching screen sizes

I'm a new and inexperienced website user but want to get my screen size to fit on other's screens when they access it. I asked the quesiton at Actinic and got the following response:

What you will need to do is set your table widths to 100% in your primary (e.g. Act_Primary.html) templates. That means the tables will resize with the screen size.

You could ask on the community (http://community.actinic.com) to see if someone has created a patch for this.

I don;t have a clue what this means, but does anyone know of a patch to sort this issue out?

Thanks

Ben

[jont]

Hi Ben - which theme / layout are you using?

[Chrismarworth]

Hello Ben

The Actinic templates use tables for their layout, if you look at the Act_Primary template a couple of lines under the end of the head section which is marked </head> you will see the start of the table with an entry similar to

<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="thinborder">

the 100% means the page will occupy the width of the viewer's screen. If images and other items such as fixed width cells in the tables prevent the page from shrinking to the size of the viewer's screen you will get a horizontal scroll bar.

If you change the 100% to 75% the page will occupy 75% of the screen etc. If you change the 100% to 800 the width will be fixed at 800px

Chris