Fixed width tables at diyaudio.com

[jwb]

I wish the front page of diyaudio.com wasn't coded to be exactly 740 pixels wide. This is less than half of the width of my screen. Since I sit almost 1 meter from my monitor, I like to use huge fonts and big windows. But with diyaudio.com, I can make my window as big as I want with no effect.

I suggest the width be changed to something like 95%, instead of 740 pixels. That way, there's still some whitespace on the sides, but the site scales with the user's window size.

PS, here's what diyaudio.com looks like on my setup:

[dhaen]

Looks like your gnome has still got the M$ hangups
Why have open windows got to be full screen width anyway? I find them better the size they are published, or about 800 wide, so I can see all my other desktop stuff.

[DRC]

Dynamic sizing would be good - but I guess it's down to the software serving the pages. It looks even worse at 1800 pixels wide

dave

[Holger Barske]

AFAIK, W3C recommends not to use percent values for table sizes in html any more. So you are somewhat stuck to absolute sizes.
Personally, I would recommend something more then 740 pixels width. Are there still people around on 800 x 600 screen resolution?
I do my page layouts with 950 pixels width, fits perfectly on a 1024 x 768 screen and doesn't look too small even on 1600 x 1200.

[jwb]

Originally posted by dhaen
Looks like your gnome has still got the M$ hangups
Why have open windows got to be full screen width anyway? I find them better the size they are published, or about 800 wide, so I can see all my other desktop stuff.

Well, I've never been a Windows user, but I know what you mean. I just like to set a huge window if I have to sit that far from the screen. Sometimes I flip the monitor 90 degrees and maximize the window that way, too.

Originally posted by HBarske
AFAIK, W3C recommends not to use percent values for table sizes in html any more. So you are somewhat stuck to absolute sizes.
Personally, I would recommend something more then 740 pixels width. Are there still people around on 800 x 600 screen resolution?
I do my page layouts with 950 pixels width, fits perfectly on a 1024 x 768 screen and doesn't look too small even on 1600 x 1200.

W3C recommends not to use any size at all on a table, because W3C thinks you should use CSS to set block element width, not (X)HTML markup. With wihich I happen to agree.

The correct invocation of course would be <table style="width: 90%">

[AudioFreak]

That page hasn't had a decent redesign for as long as I've been here. If i manage to get thru the current list of things that need doing, I'll try to fit in an overhaul of the front page sometime before christmas.

[azira]

Looking at the screenshot you posted, you can see that all the "necessary" information is contained within those 740 px's. The menu at the top, and the 3 posts with slightly longer titles are all that would win out. I think if you change the width like you propose, you're going to continue to have that blank space and just s p r e a d i t o u t a c c r o s s t h e p a g e. Which will probably be more annoying than fixed....

This is what it would look like.. sorry for the large picture. But the two large white space spots are now in the middle of the page instead of the outside of the page.

[jwb]

Originally posted by azira
Looking at the screenshot you posted, you can see that all the "necessary" information is contained within those 740 px's. The menu at the top, and the 3 posts with slightly longer titles are all that would win out. I think if you change the width like you propose, you're going to continue to have that blank space and just s p r e a d i t o u t a c c r o s s t h e p a g e. Which will probably be more annoying than fixed....

It only looks that way because your fonts are tiny. As I said, when sitting a meter or more from the screen, 8pt type is not legible. 12pt is more like it or probably larger. As you can see in my original screen shot, there's wrapping of the table rows. All I really want to do is widen the window until the table rows no longer wrap, which is impossible with fixed width.

You can, of course, acheive this in several ways. You could let the table size itself, with no width at all, and it will naturally unwrap if it has room, and not fill the window if not needed. Do this with margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; on the table block element.

[jwb]

I don't think I need to mention that pixel sizes of tables are just outdated. You never know what the resolution of the output device is going to be. If I were to display diyaudio.com on my TV at 480p HDTV resolution, 740px is going to not fit, and be 30" across. If I were to display it on a ViewSonic VP2290b at 200dpi, it will only be 3.7" across!

[azira]

to generate that image, I modified the html to 95% like was suggested and checked the output. You're right, you could use a larger font. What's the point of using a higher resolution if you just increase the font size to compensate? I like min-width tables but w3c doesn't provide a standard for that yet, NS and IE treat them differently.