Webforumz Newsletter - October 2007

FAQ

I want a blog but I don't know enough programming to create myself one?

There are several free CMS (content management systems) out there that were designed for the non-programmer in mind.

Some need a bit of knowledge in PHP.

Here are the most popular choices:


What screen resolution should I design my site in?

Although you may have noticed a decrease in the popularity of 800x600 resolution screens in favor of the 1024x768 resolution ones, as quoted in statistics on some of the various sites out there, you should still consider coding for a resolution of 800 and here's the simple reason why.

The viewport. The actual width and height of the browser window.

Some users may have their OS resolution set at 1024x768 or even 1280x1024 but how many of them actually have their browsers maximized?

When looking at my mint stats, there's these two nice little extensions called "Window Width" and "Real Estate". They grab the actual width and height (in the case of the Real Estate extension) of the browsers' window. This is the information that designers need to know.

For example, visitors coming to my portfolio, 100% of them have their browsers' window greater than 584px ... so ... that's good. 98% are greater than 744px but only 93% have their browsers' window greater than 968px.

Now, of course these are examples from the visitors coming to my portfolio site but it still gives you an idea of why designing for 1024x768 resolution might not be an automatic "yes". And remember when designing that you have to consider the browsers scrollbars so it's not really 800px. It should be more like 780px.


Why should I validate my site?

The validator is a very powerful spell-checker. Just like writing this FAQ, mistakes are easily made. If you forget to close a </div> all hell breaks loose. Well... maybe not but the browser will get confused (like some aren't confused enough), search engines and other user agents as well.

If testing your site in all the major browsers you find that it's not displaying properly or the way you intended, always validate your code first.

The HTML validator is located here: http://validator.w3.org/
The CSS validator is located here: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

There's also a Link Checker that will make sure all your links actually go somewhere and a Feed validator as well.