Comments on: Are You Designing for the Smaller Screen?

By: Metropolis

Metropolis — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:24:26 +0000

[...] de Identidad Corporativa en PDF – 9 Top CSS Essential Skills… – Rags, widows & orphans – Are you designing for the small screen? – How to be a good client – Cómo ser un diseñador independiente y no perecer en el intento – [...]

By: Matthew Babbs

Matthew Babbs — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:43:14 +0000

I guess clean XHTML doesn’t include paragraph tags. Sorry about that!

By: Matthew Babbs

Matthew Babbs — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:40:51 +0000

I’m not a fan of the idea that there should be a separate ‘mobile web’—rather, I see it as just ‘the web’, accessed by many different devices in many different places. So I don’t serve an entire separate mobile-optimised site, but I do cater to low resolutions in two ways.One, I make sure the basic design scales well down to at least 800×480, as that’s the minimum resolution likely to be found going forwards. (Scaling down to 640×480 is good, but people using a screen that small are probably also using a browser so old that it doesn’t get my CSS.)Two, I serve an @media handheld stylesheet. Most people who seriously browse with phones or other ultra-mobile devices will be using a browser (like Opera Mini/Mobile or Safari Mobile, and in the future Android and Fennec) that accepts this. As I’d be serving the same content if I had a separate site at mobi.example.com, I can handle all the necessary changes to layout, text size and so on in CSS. I can even point to lightweight, scaled-down background images if necessary, although generally I just turn these off.In the future, I’ll be able to optimise this approach further, by using CSS3 @media screen resolution queries.There is a problem with this approach: content images. It’s not as big a problem for me as it might be, because my style tends to the minimalist, but I know that sooner or later I’m going to land a client who likes oversized images. Using the browser to resize images or doing server-side resolution sniffing are poor solutions, and having a separate site for mobiles won’t help netbook users. Are there other solutions out there?

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:36:50 +0000

jardel you can redirect people to another page depending on there screen resolution. This can easily be mastered with javascript.

How to: http://www.pageresource.com/jscript/jscreen.htm

By: Thord Daniel Hedengren

Thord Daniel Hedengren — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:06:58 +0000

Thanks for your input, all.

@jardel,
That’s right, there are GUI stuff to take into consideration as well.

By: jardel

jardel — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:25:38 +0000

You forget one thing! There are the browser area where tabs and address bars stays, the start menu of OS, the status bar of browser, this all takes space on the screen too!

i like to support 800×600 or more, not less. As a owner of a site with 3 sidebars developing for brazil, 800×600 is pretty common (actually, the second after 1024~) and ie6 is common too! But i’m not going to do re-designs for little screens, i’ve been using thumb sizes in a fixed “max 380 width” for long, if people in these laptop screens start to search old posts – what is inevitable, as most of us design our sites do engage readership – they will have to scroll horizontally!

I would like to remove one sidebar or even both for the “little screen” people, but i don’t have the skill and it will kill all the usability i’ve planned for months, i don’t know if there is a way to show one site for one screen size and another site for another screen size, but i think this will be the best choice

By: Tom

Tom — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:52:50 +0000

Its something to think about but hard to design for with the very small screens in mind as it could cause problems of too much white space on a normal or large resolution screen.

By: Best of the Week by Abduzeedo « Guiwells’s Blog

Best of the Week by Abduzeedo « Guiwells’s Blog — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:17:46 +0000

[...] Are You Designing for the Smaller Screen? [...]

By: J. Angelo Racoma

J. Angelo Racoma — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 11:48:36 +0000

When I created my Eee-oriented site myasuseee.com, I looked for a free WP theme that was plain and uncluttered, and that would look nice on a 840px width screen.

These days, though, wider netbook screens are becoming more popular, with many already sporting 1024×600 screens, like my EeePC 900 and many others, including the MSI Wind, most EeePC models, and the Acer Aspire one. That means less horizontal scrolling!

My HP Mini Note even has a 1280×768 screen, which is the same resolution as my bigger laptop (but this is a rarity).

By: Freelance Friday: My Writing Week 33 | tdhedengren

Freelance Friday: My Writing Week 33 | tdhedengren — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:08:09 +0000

[...] Are You Designing for the Smaller Screen?Talking about designing for smaller screens on Devlounge [...]

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:12:01 +0000

It's always a good thing to try to keep in your head while designing. These mobile screens are starting to pop up everywhere. - Greg