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When working with Tables
and Resolution, you begin to find out that all
tables are not the same. Some tables are
set at a percentage and others, a fixed
width which is measured in pixels. You
will recall in the tables tutorial, we placed a
table on the screen and said you can make it any
width you want. The question now arises,
"how wide should I make it"? If I were to
answer that, I would say make it 760 pixels
wide. The reasoning for this is that any
widths beyond about 769 pixels will cause users
with a screen resolution of 800x600 to have to
scroll horizontally to see your page which is a
very undesirable circumstance. I would
further say that it is best to center the table
so that it will be in the center of the screen
for those viewing your pages at 1024x768.
The other table option that you
have is to set your width to 100%. This setting
will cause the table to display to full screen at all
resolutions. These are sometimes referred to as
"fluid tables". While this sounds good at the
onset, you have to consider that the text in your table
will widen out at the higher resolutions while the
images remain fixed in pixel width. Still another
option is "autostretch" which is unique to FP2003.
This option allows you to set a single column to
autostretch which in effect, allows the table to flow to
full screen, however, the only part that stretches is
that column. You can preview this autostretch
feature
here. You will have to view this page
at 1024x768 to see the effect.
There is no fixed rule as to which
choice you should make or that one way is better than
the other. Most of it depends on what you want as
an end result. It all boils down to what looks
best for the layout you are creating.
Front Page 2003 also has a means
of viewing your pages without having to set the display
properties each time you want to view it at another
resolution. To use this feature, click on
View>Page Size>and then select from the list of options.
Another feature in Front Page that I use a lot is
"Preview in Multiple Browsers". This feature
allows you to view your pages in any number of browsers
that you have loaded on your computer.
For more on this subject, you can
check in with
Jim Buyens . You
might also want to consider buying his book as it covers
all aspects of Front Page.
Just about the time you
start to become familiar with tables and
everything seems to be going along smoothly, you
happen to view your pages on someone else's
computer and everything is out of place.
What Happened? It could be that you
created your pages at 800x600 and they are
viewing the page at 1024x768 or maybe they are
using Mozilla or Netscape or maybe they have
their text set larger or maybe your page is set
using 100% tables and this list goes on and on.
It would be wonderful if
everyone had the same sized monitor and the same
brand of computer and the same web browser but
unfortunately, this is never going to happen.
I was going to write a tutorial on "resolution"
to try and explain what was going on here but
decided to put up the links below instead.
You probably won't go to every one of these
pages and read everything but I think you will
find out very quickly that this issue is not cut
and dried.
My advice on all of this
is to go with what looks best and works best for
you but spend some time checking out your pages
at various resolutions and in various browsers.
All You
Ever Wanted To Know About Resolution Links
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