[wp-hackers] Re: The fixed with of the admin area

[Kimmo Suominen]

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 04:40:05PM -0600, Stephen Rider wrote:
> 
> [... re: running Windows apps full-screen ...]
> 
> I doubt you'll find a lot of studies, but there's a whooooole lot of  
> anecdotal evidence.  It's a trend -- nobody claimed it was an absolute.
> 
> Here's another bit of anecdotal evidence for you: Look at the number  
> of fixed-width sites out there that assume ~ 1000 px wide.  That's  
> aimed squarely at Joe User running 1024x768 maximized.  I visited  
> three bank websites the other day, and they _all_ did it.

Based on the Google Analytics data for sites I'm dealing with, that is
the common minimum area for the top 2-3 screen (monitor) sizes.

Because site designers always have more data available than will fit on
the screen comfortably, they choose to treat the (most common) screen
size as the space available for them.  Some remember to subtract a few
pixels for browser elements (e.g. scroll bar, window title, menus etc).

This means that people with small screens practically have no other
option than to run their browser maximized.

This is probably one of those chicken-or-egg situations... :)

> >I generally never use apps in full-screen mode on my Windows machines,
> >slide-shows typically being the exception.
> 
> Yes, but you're a geek. ;)

Guilty as charged.  :)

> Even better if [max-width is] based on em or %, so that as font  
> size rises, so does the width.

Excellent tip -- thank you!  I hadn't thought of that and have been
using px with max-width.  Will be using em in the future.

Best regards,
+ Kimmo
-- 
<A HREF="http://kimmo.suominen.com/">Kimmo Suominen</A>