Randy Webb said:
Dr John Stockton said the following on 9/1/2005 10:31 AM:
If telling someone to use window size rather than screen size is naive,
then telling them afterwards to use screen size instead of window size is
plain stupid.
Well - neither conclusion is naive or stupid.
(John likes to see things and make negative assumptions about the person
making the statement. For example here he might have assumed "the person
making the suggestion wasn't addressing the topic in any detail" but instead
he made the assumption "the person making the suggestion doesn't know any
better".)
In any case...
Neither suggestion is "right" because both assume a different question that
hasn't been explicitly asked. But first some back ground.
The usability studies on the matter are rather clear on several points:
1) People with small screen resolutions (say 1024X768 or less) tend to run
their applications (including) maximized. People with larger screen
resolutions tend not to run their applications in windows (windows the gui
element, not Windows the OS). ;^)
2) People with small screen resolutions tend to eliminate "obvious"
real-estate grabbers. They will more often go after elements that force
horizontal scrolling (Explorer Bars in IE, for example) than vertical
scrolling (tool bars, status bars, etc). People with larger screen sizes
tend to leave such elements alone.
3) In general people will resize a browser window (if possible) to eliminate
a horizontal scroll bar. Other than they generally leave the size as-is.
The rule of thumb is: less is more. The less screen real-estate you have
the more of it will be dedicated to the current task. The more screen
real-estate you have the less of it will be focused to the current task.
What this means is that while the extremes (extremely small or extremely
high resulutions) are generally static the middle area is more alike when
comes to real-estate dedicated to the task (in this case viewing a web
page). The behavior at smaller resolutions is to dedicate most, if not all,
of that small screen to the Web page. The larger resolutions will allow
multiple applications and interface elements to coexist with the Web page so
that the actual slice of screen dedicated to the page is similar to that of
the smaller screen.
There are three metrics of interest:
Screen Size: this is the largest that application can be (barring virtual
desktop extenders, but lets assume a more general audience for the time
being). When it comes right down to it however what you really need here is
"Available Screen Size" - the size of the area dedicated to application
display in the OS (this measurement would not include such things as the
Windows Task Bar if that bar was set to "always on top").
Browser Window Size: This is the size of the browser widow - the outside
frame. It's the total size of the application, from edge to edge.
Browser Client Area Size: This is the space available in the browser for
the display of Web pages. It would not include scrollbars, explorer bars,
toolbars, statusbars, etc.
So... considering that (still cursory examination of a very interesting
topic) when applied to the original posters situation.
The situation was that a static web page would be generated with specific
additional content placed either on the right side of the main content area
"if there is room" or on the bottom of the page.
There are two questions (at least) that can be asked:
1) "Is there enough room this instant, as the browser is currently
displayed, to place the content on the side and not scroll horizontally?"
(Scrolling is a bit of a crap because scroll bar widths are not constant
across environments... but the aim is definately no horizontal scroll bar).
To answer this you need to look at the client-area of the browser and allow
some padding for scroll bar width.
2) "Is there enough room to add the content on the side without horizontal
scrolling either this instant or if the browser is resized?" (The
assumption, of course, is that the browser can't be resized larger than the
screen size.)
Well - this one is much trickier to answer. A starting guess might be to
work out the percentage of the width taken up by non-page materials (using
the Browser Window size and the Browser Client Area size) and apply that
ratio to the available screen width to see how much of the browser would be
dedicated to web pages if it were maximized.
I believed that the original poster was asking the first question. John
believed she was asking the second or some variation (or, if she wasn't that
she SHOULD be). Considering that I don't think either answer is wrong...
although one is definately tactless.
However using screen size alone is probably never the correct answer. The
only question this could answer would be something like: "Could the content
fit if the browser was maximized and if it featured no horizontally inserted
interface elements." The question is not looking at the state of the
environment but assuming one potential state. And you never want to make
decisions based on such assumptions.
Jim Davis