There were two very important options for us to consider, both would affect the way that visitors could view or even simply access the website. We haven't confirmed on a choice yet, a bit more research on the cons and pros is needed to be done, but what we have agreed to go forth with, is the following:
- The website will be static, which means that regardless of the size of the browser window that you are using to view our site with, or the size of your monitor, the website will stay the same width, such as http://community.robertcity.com.
- The website will be 'browser friendly', which means that regardless of the browser you use, you will most likely be able to view it almost the way that everyone else does. A font may be different slightly, or a section may be aligned a slight bit different, but the website as a whole will function the same.
Notice the white, or in this came, gray space that 'surrounds' the website itself? The image was taken on a wide screen 1024x768 monitor, which is the smallest a wide screen mostly gets, and because most monitors that are wide screen have resolutions up to 1600x1400 and more, the 'white' space may cover over two thirds of the browser!
But of course if we choose to do a fluid template, such as this website: http://www.mybb.robertcity.com/ you may notice that if you resize the browser window, the forum will try to 'fit in' the space, until you get to a point smaller than the forum can handle. The problem with fluid templates is that those with wide screen monitors will see too much of the forum, it will stretch out and be harder to read.
It seems like neither option is great, huh? Well, when the day comes that everyone will be using wide screen 1600x1400 monitors, we'll modify our website to fit better with that, but for now, we must accommodate as many browsers and monitors as possible. Therefore we choose the static width. What about the white space problem? I'm sure those with wide monitors can both resizing their browser windows to reduce the white space, and if they refuse, oh well. All is life.
The second part of the decision, as mentioned earlier, is the browser compatibility. What's that exactly, you may ask? An Internet browser is a program that can access the Internet and display the information received as text and graphics, so that we can easily understand them. You probably either use Internet Explorer or Safari. Those are the default, or the first browser available at setup, for the Microsoft Windows operating system (Internet Explorer), or the Mac OS operating system (Safari).
You may not be using one of those, you actually may be using either FireFox, Opera, Netscape, or the newest browser, Google Chrome.
But what does this all mean? Thinking computer wise, all Internet Browsers access the Internet the same way, but they may interrupt it differently, such as when listening to someone speak a language you do not speak, vs listening to someone speak a language you do speak. The 'other' language may be harder to translate, therefore the meaning you may get out of it may be different than originally intended. Whereas listening to someone speak your langauge is easy to understand.
So Browsers can at times translate a website's information incorrectly, sometimes a lot, sometimes just a little, but regardless, that misunderstanding may affect the layout of the website, or even prevent you from accessing it at all. Why is that? Be sure to note that each browser listed above was produced by different people and groups. Therefore, they each program the browser to translate websites slightly different, sometimes for the better.
The most common difference is the font type. On a simple website, such as the WordPress site shown via a picture above, the font type may be different depending on the browser you use, and if you have changed any settings. This can cause some frustration if the webmaster wants their website to be viewed using a certain font, regardless of the browser. This is an easy problem to solve, but there are thousands of other problems with the different browsers, and one of them seems to cause a great number of them, Internet Explorer.
This browser uses different techniques than most others to translate websites. This can be good in some cases, bad in others. When designing a website that will work with all browsers, you must make sure that different types of codes will only be translated with different browsers. There is an Internet Explorer problem with widths and IE 6.0 This version of IE (short for Internet Explorer) is default on Windows XP.
When you resize IE 6.0 when viewing a website with a min/max width code (which determines how 'fit in' the website will stay), and you resize the browser to a width of 800px, the website will freeze your browser, including all other browser windows using IE 6.0. This can be very bad, no, it is horrible! But in order to avoid this, one must either not resize their browser to 800px if using IE 6.0, not access the website again, or upgrade to a newer version of IE, or switch to another browser, such as FireFox.
Some people don't want to do that, so they may leave the website, therefore you loose a visitor. This is very bad in the webmaster career. That is why you must setup a website to work with all browsers, even the occasional problems with IE.
So, to end this blog post, we are working hard to make sure that every operating system and browser can view this page properly, or at least as close to properly as possible. So please keep a look out for updates on the website's presentation, and we hope you will enjoy the 'New Beginning' of RobertCity.com.
-RobertCity.com Staff.
