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

That's right. Xara-WD generated pages don't resize the way the ones here at Talkgraphics do. See the sites listed by John above - like apple's site - if you want to see other fixed width pages for comparison. What Xara-WD does in this respect is a well established approach to more graphically oriented web designs.

The screen size design quandry is simply answered by answering a simple question:
Are my visitors buyers?
If Yes design for 1038x 748 minimum.
Alt. question: Do I even know anyone still using 800x600?
If yes:
Would they be liable to buy anything, then?

I think it is lousy/lazy design to not have a decent screen size - it actually makes your presentation look like one of those cheap throw-together hustle Sites "Get Rich By Friday For $19.97"

I was sad to realise that XWD could not auto-resize, but I'd never design to "waste" screen real estate.

Just my $2.97 worth (devalued Oz)

Cheers!

HimAGAIN

I used to design my pages with resizeable content. I'd have certain things a fixed width (like sidebars) while the main content was resizeable. Here's an example: http://dndbg.madladdesigns.co.uk/. This way the user can have any size browser and the site will utilize it. I personally think it looks better if the content could fill the window.

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Originally Posted by himagain

......If Yes design for 1038x 748 minimum........

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I hope that's a misprint ..... at 1038 half of the country probably have a horizontal scroll bar, since 1024 is a very common resolution.

How can you expect that a site that is put together graphically, can stretch to fill the available window. The final design will NEVER look like it's supposed to, and that's the whole point of designing it graphically in the first place!

I have not got any idea how old you are, but you would be surprised at the large number of older users with bad eyesight etc. still use 800 x 600. At my last office, I administered the office network and at least 25% of the office users were using 800 x 600.

The fluid layout/fixed width debate is old and akin to a religeous war - with both arguments having valid points.

XWD uses a HTML positioning technique that is designed to build web pages that look as far as possible the same as you see when designing them in XWD. This particular technique requires fixed positioning and sizing to make this WYSIWYG trick work and because of this XWD cannot support fluid layout or adjustments to varying browser width.

There's no point complaining about it or suggesting it's a terrible oversite - it's just a necessary compromise to allow the design-led nature of XWD page designs to be translated into HTML for display in the browser window.

I don't work for Xara but given the way XWD generates pages, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a fluid layout feature to appear in a future release either.

Enjoy XWD for what it does and don't berate it for what it doesn't. If a fluid layout is very important to you, look at other web authoring solutions.

Paul

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Originally Posted by pauland

Enjoy XWD for what it does and don't berate it for what it doesn't. If a fluid layout is very important to you, look at other web authoring solutions.

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A-freaking-men.

ON EDIT: In other words, I strongly agree. ;)