need pointers on websites

[pbcmedia]

ive been doing graphics and web design for a while now, but ive never really quite picked up the jist of how to make any site that i create appeal to both 800x600 viewers as well as 1024x768....

is there an efficient way to appeal to both?
are there any codes to use so that way when the window is not @ max size scrolling will be as minimul as possible?

my main issue is that if i do a site for 1024x768 anybody with a res any lower would have to scroll all over the place and if i do it for 800x600 viewers it looks to small for the 1024x768 viewers....

heres the link to a site im about to build maybe you can leave your suggestions as far as how to conquer this problem ive been having

also is there a way to lower the loading time for the bg music... i edited the length of the song to maybe 10 sec or and it still takes a min.(not literally) to load up and then starts to play, i want it to play as soon as the pg opens.....

SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME..... I'd be much oblidged, Thank you

GudLyfe Prod.

[stiney51]

Well I don't know that I can help with the screen resolution problem, as I've never seen a site that truly looked good at different resolutions. I've generally stuck to the idea that if you need to design 1 site for everything (rather than coding 2 separate sites and checking browser/resolution specs before loading the page) then make you decision based on who you have to appeal to. Supposedly there are only 10-15% of web users still using 800x600 resolution, so unless you aboslutely need to appeal to everyone, it might be best to go for the larger resolution and let the people with lower resolution scroll. Afterall they have to on almost every site you see nowadays.

As for the music. I would suggest against auto-playing music on any website. I've seen several polls suggesting it's the #1 thing that annoys people when browsing the web. I can speak from my own experience, that unless I absolutely need to see the site that has music start automatically, I immediately close it and look elsewhere. I guess it depends on your audience, but you can provide the music and let people opt to turn it on.

[tamlin]

I agree with stiney - especially with regard to auto-playing background music. That's a definite no-no!!

[cancer10]

Well, I make the main table width of 750px, thus my site works perfectly fine on 800x600 and 1024*786

[MoodsR4Cattle]

One thing you can do is make your background image one logo (one little section of the large image you are currently displaying) and have it repeat. As it is now, the image creates a vertical and horizontal scroll bar, and it centers and leaves white space on all sizes in a larger window.

Like Stiney said, people with 800 x 600 monitors are pretty used to scrolling as they are now the minority. I'm one of those dinosaurs that still uses tables because CSS code displays differently from browser to browser (sometimes radically), and I set them to percents to accommodate any size browser window.

I agree as well that songs should be selected to play, not automatic. There are a lot of cool mp3 players that you can use.

XSPF Web Music Player (Flash) - Plays MP3 on your website
FREE Flash MP3 Player
embedded Free MP3 Flash Player for myspace, blog and your web sites

[gman11234]

Originally Posted by pbcmedia

ive been doing graphics and web design for a while now, but ive never really quite picked up the jist of how to make any site that i create appeal to both 800x600 viewers as well as 1024x768....

is there an efficient way to appeal to both?
are there any codes to use so that way when the window is not @ max size scrolling will be as minimul as possible?

my main issue is that if i do a site for 1024x768 anybody with a res any lower would have to scroll all over the place and if i do it for 800x600 viewers it looks to small for the 1024x768 viewers....

heres the link to a site im about to build maybe you can leave your suggestions as far as how to conquer this problem ive been having

also is there a way to lower the loading time for the bg music... i edited the length of the song to maybe 10 sec or and it still takes a min.(not literally) to load up and then starts to play, i want it to play as soon as the pg opens.....

SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME..... I'd be much oblidged, Thank you

GudLyfe Prod.

I don't know if there is in HTML, but I know there is code in PHP, I've got to look it up.

[unvkyle]

I'll try a high res. more and more people are switching to widescreen monitors

[Jacorre]

Have you tried using a fluid layout instead of a fixed size layout. What I mean is that instead of using pixel sizes to define the width/heights of divs you use percentages instead. For example, if you said the width of your container div should be 90% then that div will take up 90% of the browser window, whether the visitor is using 800x600 or 1024x768, etc.