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

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

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.

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

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.

Good point John

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

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

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.

Very well said, Ishkey.

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

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?

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.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by himagain

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

---

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

Quote:

---

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.

---

A-freaking-men.

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