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What's going on?

My name is Rahoul Baruah (aka Baz) and I'm a software developer in Leeds (England).

This is a log of things I've discovered while writing software in Ruby on Rails. In other words, geek stuff.

However, I've decided to put this blog on ice - I would ask you to check out my business blog here (or subscribe here).

25 November, 2006

Design Decision: Page Width

On my new project I have just taken the decision to fix the page width. Each controller must decide whether to use the 'narrow' or 'wide' layouts - these are identical apart from the width given to the "main_content" div: 750px and 1200px respectively.

Why those values? Well, my target market is not likely to be using the latest and greatest computers. Most systems ship with a default resolution of 1024x768 nowadays, but because of my target I have chosen to use a narrow view (which is most of the application) of 750px - meaning it will look good at 800x600. As for the wide view, that is specifically designed for 1024x768 or higher. The layout includes a left-justified menu panel that is 180px wide - so at 1024 you can use the horizontal scrollbar to look at the entirety of the page sans menu. And if you are lucky enough to have a widescreen laptop or a higher resolution display, you can see the lot in one go.

Of course, if you've got a 1600 screen then these fixed widths are going to be annoying. But, as I say, my target market is unlikely to have these - so I'll deal with that once the complaints start rolling in.

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