Not resizing properly

July 17, 2006 2:31 PM

AskMe and MeFi seem to have stopped resizing properly. I'm having to pull the window extremely wide to keep the edges of threads from being cut off, which wasn't the case before. Is this an update-in-progress that's just temporary? (If not, then consider this a waaaaaah.)
posted by occhiblu to Bugs at 2:31 PM (26 comments total)

Using Firefox, by the way. Seems to be fine in IE.
posted by occhiblu at 2:35 PM on July 17, 2006

I put a min-width in of ~950px wide. Non-members see a big text ad that stretches across the the page and without the min-width, the design breaks down.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:22 PM on July 17, 2006

Please, please undo this!
posted by Rash at 3:27 PM on July 17, 2006

Same problem on Opera 9. However, Opera does have a handy built-in "fit to width" feature that will fit any website into the width of your browser window.
posted by gyc at 4:07 PM on July 17, 2006

Seconded.
posted by cribcage at 4:08 PM on July 17, 2006

Could logged-in people be served a different stylesheet?
posted by jack_mo at 4:09 PM on July 17, 2006

fine. undid.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:17 PM on July 17, 2006

Forcing people to a certain width is really bad to begin with. On top of that, 950px is way too wide!
posted by Chuckles at 4:22 PM on July 17, 2006

Thanks.
posted by cribcage at 4:22 PM on July 17, 2006

Bah! (but thank you!)
posted by Chuckles at 4:22 PM on July 17, 2006

Thank you!
posted by Rash at 4:26 PM on July 17, 2006

Forcing people to a certain width is really bad to begin with. On top of that, 950px is way too wide!

Not necessarily, especially with monitors growing in size. If the layout is wonky below 1000px, I don't mind if sites have that as a minimum. Heck, I regularly post >1000px wide images to my photo site and people seem to like it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:37 PM on July 17, 2006

Not necessarily, especially with monitors growing in size.

True, but have you checked the site statistics? I bet you'll find that bunches of people are viewing the site at insanely low resolutions, like 800x600. Even at 1024x768, A min-width of 950px pretty much requires a maximized window, which a lot of people prefer not to use.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 4:41 PM on July 17, 2006

last I checked, 5% were using less than 1024x768, and yeah, I know lots of people don't maximize their browser widths at larger screen sizes.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:52 PM on July 17, 2006

I bet you'll find that bunches of people are viewing the site at insanely low resolutions, like 800x600.

I do, pretty regularly. Does this make me some sort of luddite?
posted by jack_mo at 4:54 PM on July 17, 2006

i just looked at the stats for the past couple months, and 93% of users are hitting the site with a resolution of 1024x768 or higher.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:02 PM on July 17, 2006

Screen size is not the issue though (I'm sure this discussion has taken place already, few people seem to be interested in understanding the argument though).

Reading a site in a maximized window is crazy. I don't want metafilter covering 90% of my screen width (okay, so 950px is only 75%..), and I don't want to read lines longer than 60-90 characters. At 800px it only covers 62% of my desktop, which leaves room to watch progress in another application, compose a message in a text editor, watch some TV or a video, etc. etc.

Taking over one's entire screen seems to be a common mistake/tactic in consumer oriented products.
posted by Chuckles at 5:50 PM on July 17, 2006

I really can't comprehend how vertical resolution has any bearing on this issue whatsoever - vertical orientation is built into 99% of all web pages. This should only be about width!
posted by Chuckles at 5:53 PM on July 17, 2006

Thanks for fixing it.

And yes, I have big screens with lots of room, but I cannot stand reading sites maximized (mainly because I usually also have email or IM applications going, and want to be able to see those at the same time).
posted by occhiblu at 6:01 PM on July 17, 2006

You people need more monitors, not smaller Web sites.
posted by dg at 7:44 PM on July 17, 2006

It's an issue of line-length when reading apart from anything else.

The "viewport" of a newspaper is about, what, 18 inches wide? But they don't use text which goes right across that 18 inches, they use columns of text about three or four inches across, because people are comfortable with their eyes travelling backward and forward that distance.

Anything too wide and you start to feel you're at a tennis match...
posted by AmbroseChapel at 8:55 PM on July 17, 2006

Well, it is still a problem in my RSS reader (thunderbird), I guess because I am not logged in..

To quote occhiblu, "waaaaaah."
posted by Chuckles at 9:15 PM on July 17, 2006

mathowie writes "Not necessarily, especially with monitors growing in size. If the layout is wonky below 1000px, I don't mind if sites have that as a minimum. Heck, I regularly post >1000px wide images to my photo site and people seem to like it."

That's because oversized images on IE automatically get resized to fit (probably using a really crappy but fast algorithm). Also available on FF but I can't remember if this is the default behaviour.

dg writes "You people need more monitors, not smaller Web sites."

I dual head 1280X1024. I still don't like web windows much wider than 80-100 characters. Spreadsheets are the only thing that require all that width be dedicated to a single application.
posted by Mitheral at 9:40 AM on July 18, 2006

Mitheral writes "Spreadsheets are the only thing that require all that width be dedicated to a single application"

Doh! And CAD. Probably most other drawing/graphic packages I'd guess.
posted by Mitheral at 9:42 AM on July 18, 2006

Huh. I've always browsed with my ..er.. browser maximized. Seeing stuff in the background is way too distracting.
posted by deborah at 1:04 PM on July 18, 2006

That's because oversized images on IE automatically get resized to fit - Mitheral

Yes. It's very annoying.

Huh. I've always browsed with my ..er.. browser maximized. Seeing stuff in the background is way too distracting. - deborah

Me too.
posted by raedyn at 12:51 PM on July 20, 2006