How much longer do you cater for the 800 x 600 screen resolution?

[haakoo]

Knew you were right,but had to go through my posts to find it

Hans

[steve.ledger]

That's strange, I've never considered the printing function of a web site (except in Flash as printing can be a problem here).

..and

neodeist: I find the concept of printing a web page a bit alien

I guess my history has set my opinion in stone. Years ago I won a competition run by a local ISP to design their new website, one of the things was that it had to print gracefully to normal home printers.
All information sites should print to an A4 page in my opinion, they are called web *pages* after all
But seriously, as I see hundreds of home computers users each year and answer their questions about their computing and internet woes it so very often comes up that they get so frustrated trying to print some information they found on a web site (geneology for example is very common amongst older generation users) only to find it doesn't print right on their home A4 printer simply because the site designer hasn't considered this.
It's a fundamental flaw that makes no sense to me.
Websites are morphing into TV style productions now with flash and I suppose Silverlight etc, and it's unlikely that very many people will want to print these multi-media style sites, but basically for information sites we are still talking an online 'magazine' style *publication* with *pages* which can reasonably be expected to print to an A4 sheet of paper. It's obviously a more common requirement of home users than some have realised.
So yes, in my view all websites should be resolution independent rather than fixed.

Incidentally, eBay isn't fixed at 1024 - it will shrink to around 762 - 840 pix before a horizontal scroll bar appears & will print perfectly to an A4 page (though some sellers create html content that can blow it out) as does vBulletin actually, they are resolution independent allowing for printing See window width on Opera title bar in screen shot below, which also shows a print preview of the eBay site, perfectly fitting an A4 sheet of paper..

[raynerj1]

A browser is not fixed width, so web pages should not be fixed width.

[Judi A]

I print web pages from time to time. Some times it is much easier to have a printout than bouncing back and forth between tabs or another program.

When I reformatted my hard drive I printed out instructions from several sites. I also print out google maps to take on a trip.

[RedWombat]

I think really boils down to who your target audience is.

As far as printing goes, I understand people's desire to print, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the web. Why not use a little CSS and JS or such to give them a print option that will fit to a standard page size?

HTML was never really intended to be a fixed specification. As designers and developers, we've done that to it. Back in the day, we used nested tables to accomplish what we wanted with layout. Now it's CSS. The W3C has been accommodating and standardized specifications like CSS etc. that allow us to do this.

I personally do a little of each for my clients, again, depending on who the target audience or demographic is.

[juergen]

There is a huge difference between screen and printing.
Regarding screen, I check the majority of clients that view the current content the customer has. It has to be done again and again for all clients. Banks have completely different customers(hardware/software) than furniture makers and game producers.
If they got cash, produce something good which looks good in all browsers on all platform in any resolution. If budget is tight, focus on main customer profile.

Regarding printing, RedWombat, you pretty much told it all.

Each browser has a print button. Dont implement a print function that will do something different than the browser does until you want to confuse your customers.

Just use what all browsers above Netscape 4 and IE5 support: stylesheets for printing.
Set all parts of the page that are not intended for printing to invisible and youre basically done.

Juergen

PS. I was tempted to delete anything I wrote to just repeat one sentence from RedWombat: "I think really boils down to who your target audience is."
Thats all you have to consider ......

[Egg Bramhill]

I'd forgotten this thread. Leaving the printing bit aside for the moment it would appear that almost all the big sites have abandoned the 800 pixel width restriction. Even this forum appears to have a minimum width of 916 pixels approx. (BBC 1018 pixels)

So were does that leave the printing/web page ratio situation? Taking the BBC their site @ 1018pix/96ppi = 10.8 inches. Almost the height of an A4 page (11.8"). Yet in modern browsers it's quite simple to select "Shrink to Fit".

So personally I can't see the need to retain the old 800 pixel standard nor to being bound by the limits of an A4 page.

[steve.ledger]

Even this forum appears to have a minimum width of 916 pixels approx.

How are you determining that Egg?

[Egg Bramhill]

I'm just narrowing the browser window until the horizontal scroll bar appears. Alt-Print Screen.

Paste into XX and measure the window width.

[Egg Bramhill]

Taking the BBC their site @ 1018pix/96ppi = 10.8 inches. Almost the height of an A4 page (11.8"). Yet in modern browsers it's quite simple to select "Shrink to Fit".

In fact if you visit the BBC site and do a print preview set to 100% it just fits on a landscape A4 allowing for print margins.