Whay do I have to scroll side to side?

[sha-ul]

I noticed something recently, firefox doesn't seem to want to resize this forum to fit the screen width. In the past this would be due to an oversized picture, a line of unbroken script, or type, in this case, it seems like the global setting for width is fixed to X-many pixels.
Anyone got a clue?

[243LPR]

hold control and minus at the same time to shrink.

[sha-ul]

That controls your zoom, in or out, but the pages should auto adjust to fit the width.

[COplains]

I've noticed it too in IE as well. It didn't do that before the DNS attack a few days ago.

[sha-ul]

I wonder if there isn't a transparent jpeg, or gif that's forcing it extra wide.

[GaryB]

There used to be wide margins on the side of the pages and those are gone now, or have been greatly reduced. I wonder if that wasn't something changed in the BBS software possibly.

[Hotolds442]

Same thing happened in Safari.

[sha-ul]

Maybe Mr Furious will chime in.

[J.Baker]

I figured it wouldn't be too long before someone complained about this. LOL

I made a change to the overall document width settings the other week. The problem is that you guys having to scroll sideways are using monitors that are dinosaurs (i.e. 15 and 17" square monitors), whereas the rest of the civilized world has moved on to the 21st century and are using widescreen monitors. LOL

15" square monitors typically used a screen resolution of 800x600
17" square monitors typically used a screen resolution of 1024x768
Widescreen monitors typically have a minimal resolution of 1280x720 and can run up as high as 1920x1080 or even higher depending on the size. (1920x1080 is the most widely used)

As you can see this vast difference in display size can create problems when it comes to formatting the site to display optimally for all viewers. If we format the site to be friendly to the lowest resolution (800x600), the majority of users with widescreen monitors end up having over half their screen width being empty white space. This is what a 800x600 friendly website looks like on a 21.5" widescreen monitor set to 1920x1080...



Just look at all that wasted space! Now in comparison, here's a screen shot of a site that utilizes the full 1920 width...



The other issue created by this is in regard to formatting the articles. The smaller screen resolution really stiffles my ability to format the articles and other content in a consistent manner due to the limited width. When you only have 800 width to work with and the left-hand content menu column takes up 25% of that, and the right hand column with banners needs 300 pixels, you're only left with 300 pixels for the center column which displays the articles. Even with the minimum width increased to 1024 (where it was at previously) you are still limited to a very narrow 468 pixel center column. This means that image thumbnails have to be as small as possible, and rather than being a majority of the display area on the screen the article are covers less than half the screen area. In short, it just doesn't work well.

That said, I have reluctantly reverted the minimal width to 1024 which is what it was set to previously. I would however suggest that if you were having to scroll horizontally that you seriously consider upgrading your monitor in the near future as the square 4:3 format is dead and gone. Widescreen monitors are cheap these days so there's really no viable excuse not to upgrade and join the 21st century. A quick look at BestBuy.com shows that for as little as $65 you can get an Acer 20" LCD - that's less than most 1-piece scope bases these days.

[GaryB]

Excellent! Now I have an excuse to get rid of my "dinosaur".
But, honey!?!

[Bharada]

Unless I'm looking at a spreadsheet or HD video there's no reason for me to run a browser the full width of a 1920 px monitor (which I've had for over five years). For text-based content it actually makes it harder to read when your head is forced to turn in order to follow a long line of text. Just imagine how difficult it would be to read a newspaper if it was set as a single column of text the full width of the page.

[Hotolds442]

It's a lot better now on a mobile device. Thank You JB.

[243LPR]

Who has money to spend on computers?! All my money goes for more Savage stuff!!

[Westcliffe01]

I believe the issue is fixed now gents

[J.Baker]

Unless I'm looking at a spreadsheet or HD video there's no reason for me to run a browser the full width of a 1920 px monitor (which I've had for over five years). For text-based content it actually makes it harder to read when your head is forced to turn in order to follow a long line of text. Just imagine how difficult it would be to read a newspaper if it was set as a single column of text the full width of the page.

If you're having to turn your head to read your monitor then you've got your face way to close to it.

Besides that, you totally missed my point here. Re-read this paragraph of my previous post...

The other issue created by this is in regard to formatting the articles. The smaller screen resolution really stifles my ability to format the articles and other content in a consistent manner due to the limited width. When you only have 800 width to work with and the left-hand content menu column takes up 25% of that, and the right hand column with banners needs 300 pixels, you're only left with 300 pixels for the center column which displays the articles. Even with the minimum width increased to 1024 (where it was at previously) you are still limited to a very narrow 468 pixel center column. This means that image thumbnails have to be as small as possible, and rather than being a majority of the display area on the screen the article are covers less than half the screen area. In short, it just doesn't work well.

If you'll note, I currently have this and the other site set to have a maximum document width of 1600 pixels. The column layout is setup to 25%/75%/300px which works out to having 400 pixels for the left-hand menu column, 1210 for the main content column and 300 for the right column. The most important column is the middle column where the primary content is displayed, and as pointed out above the lower resolutions (those lower than 1280 wide) simply don't allow for sufficient width to display the content in an attractive or appealing manner because the middle column ends up being far to narrow.

Could I make the left column narrower? Yes, but in doing so the RRS feeds would get squashed to the point you'd have a hard time reading the headlines.

Could I make the right column narrower? Not really because it's set at 300px which is the precise width of the medium rectangle banners displayed there.