This tutorial will provide the necessary guidelines for designing websites to fit for various resolutions such as 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024 and higher
One of the most important web design principles is to design websites such that they fit all resolutions. It has been that moist web sites are designed to cater to only one resolution. The result is that though such websites look perfect in an 800x400 resolution, they may appear small and empty if viewed in a 1024 x 768 resolution as a result of the wasted space around it. Besides, visitors in one page can also see more content that reduces the need to scroll down the page.
Based on our research as well as our site statistics, we have found that majority of our viewers are on the 1024x768 resolutions and higher and are gradually switching to higher resolutions. It is therefore vital to design web sites for all resolutions.
For e.g., Try out the Entheos site in all resolutions higher than 800 x 600 and you will find that it is designed to fit the page exactly.
Therefore to sum it up it becomes essential to design a website in various resolutions to
- Make the website fit any page without making it look empty and small
- To reduce the amount of scrolling required to view a page
With that bit of background information, lets get started on how to design a web site for all screen resolutions.
Step 1: Decide on your lowest Screen Resolution
Your web site will have to be designed keeping the lowest resolution in mind.
Through our research we have found that
- Less than 0.5% are on the 640 x 480 resolution So we ignore that completely.
- The next important resolution is the 800 x 600 resolution. For e.g., Most of our visitors are on the 800 x 600 resolution, so we use this as our lowest screen resolution. This means that our web site has to fit all resolutions equal to or higher than 800 x 600.
Step 2: Design Your Web Site based On This Resolution
Once you decide on your lowest screen resolution, design your web site for the particular resolution. For this
- All your graphics must be designed for this resolution
- Design your web site and export the images as you would normally do
Step 3: While converting your design to HTML make sure all your tables are measured in terms of percentages
This is the key trick behind developing web sites for all resolutions. You need to work in terms of percentages and not pixels. If you work in pixels you are giving an absolute measurement to a table, whereas working in percentages gives a relative measurement. Therefore, the table must be a given percentage of the screen resolution.
- The first step is to make a table with 100% height and 100% width.
- You could also make it 95% if you want some white space around it.
For e.g., If you were to design a site for a 800 x 600 resolution, you would probably make a table with width 800 px and height 600 px. However, if you were to design a web site for all resolutions you need to make a table with width and height 100% or to ensure that the web page will scale to fit the page no matter what the screen resolution. The table will be 100% of the screen resolution or whatever percentage you choose to give it.
Step 4: Within the table, measure cells in terms of pixels except for the cell for the content
- Give a fixed measurement to all your cells except for the content cell.
- Leave the content cell blank.
Step 5: Insert images and content
Once you have designed your tables in terms of percentages,
- Insert your images and content
- Use general layouts with a logo on the top left corner and your navigation buttons in the top right or left navigation bar.
- For more complex layouts, use background fills to design your web sites.
- Position your images appropriately – Since you are designing web sites that fit all resolutions you need to position your images accordingly (for your header). This can be easily achieved using the following tips
- Use the top left and right corners for fixed images
- Let the middle tile according to the size of the page.
Step 6: Test your site in all the resolutions
The final step is to test your site in all the resolutions that are available on your computer. To do this
- Right click on your Desktop and click on Properties
- Click on the tab Settings
- Under Screen area, shift the scale to 800 x 600, 1024x768 or higher if possible by clicking and dragging
- Once you have chosen the resolution you want to check the site in, click on the Test button
- If you can see the bitmap clearly you can click on Apply
Similarly, check your site in all the resolutions and if it is working fine, it means you have successfully designed and developed a web site that fitsfor all resolutions. Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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