Why is my webpage only 2/3 of the width of my browser when i preview it?

[Rush]

Hi
im new to this software...
why does it make a website that fills only about 2/3 of the width of the browser.
when i preview my new page in my browser, it only fills the browser 2/3 of its width.
why?
how can i stop this?
thanks

[ss-kalm]

Web Designer makes fixed size pages - out of the box they cannot dynamically fill the browser window. They will always be the width they are designed.

If you design at 1024 pixels and your screen resolution is 1440, you will have a 208 pixels at each side of the design.

[Rush]

i dont understand why such an important thing is ignored...
so i can spend months designing a website, only to see it online squashed into 2/3 of the browser window?
sorry..
but i think i'll try out a different web design software

[covoxer]

Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com), Apple (http://www.apple.com), Intel (http://www.intel.com), AMD (http://www.amd.com), NVIDIA (http://www.nvidia.com), Adobe (http://www.adobe.com), Xara (http://www.xara.com) just to name a few. All these pages will not stretch to fill your browser width.

[aridzone]

Good point John

Besides you can make your page any width you want.
If its too big you will see a scrollbar at the bottom.

[Ross Macintosh]

Rush, remember not everone has the same size monitor as you and their browser windows often aren't maximized so they don't fill the entire screen area. If you make your page really wide it might suit your monitor & browser window preference but it might make most of your site visitors have to scroll horizontally. Most web designers typically try to avoid that horizontally scrolling.

In html it is possible to have web pages that dynamically adjust as the browser window is resized. The content shifts around as the window is resized. No doubt you've seen that kind of layout. The problem is that each visitor is potentially seing a different site. It can work okay on sites that are primarily textual but potentially messes up the formatting of more graphic sites from what the designer wanted. In the examples John provided links to above, the designers wanted to control how the sites are experienced. Xara-WD is oriented towards WYSIWYG site creation that provides the designer a high degree of fidelity between what you see in the program and what your visitors will see in a variety of browsers. Xara-WD makes this possible for even designers with limited skills. Traditionally achieving wysiwyg fidelity of the kind you see on high-end sites required very advanced skills on the part of the designer/design team.

Regards, Ross

[ishkey]

The current trend is that most computers are using a screen size of 1024x768 pixels or more. If you start talking Fluid vs Fixed, then you open up a whole new can of worms. As different browsers will display your pages differently, they all do not play by the same standards. You would need to set the proper %
to make a fluid width site that accomodates everyone. "NOT EASY"
To cover 96% of your viewers - 800×600 resolution, with no horizontal scroll! and 1280×768 resolution and everything in between, you would work in this range but be mindful of how line-length affects readability. Nobody wants to read a line of text 1980px long. You would have to address max-width CSS property to specify how wide the #wrap element can become, change the px to em, which leads to other declarations. It goes on and on.
Hard coders have been up against this for a long time.
You can try out all the web design softwares out there to no avail.
I always say - be more concerned with your Content and Audience - after all you want the to come and stay, otherwise putting a web up is a waste of time.

[Soquili]

Very well said, Ishkey.

[remi]

The software of this forum (vBulletin) is also using an flexible layout (no static widths and no static lengths). You as user can decide by your own, if you want to read long lines of text or not (just resize your browser window).

The current trend with Webdevelopers/Webdesigners is to use well known (X)HTML/CSS frameworks for creating flexible and/or static layouts. Two very good frameworks of this type are YAML and Blueprint. No one needs to learn all the differences in browsers, in order to get a great flexible CSS based layout. Instead, such Frameworks do the hard work for you.

Remi

[himagain]

Hi people,
Am I missing something here?
I just auto-resized my screen to 800x600 and it is fine - for someone stuck with 800x600. In fact I'm writing in it now, instead of my usual 1024x768.
Everything is in its place. Just small overall screen estate.

But - Xara can't dynamically resize?