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mrgtb wrote:Something I wanted to touch on about the ProSilver style. I was reading somebody mention on another forum tonight why it uses an 850px max-width style and have been thinking same thing myself.
How comes you do that, rather than using gutter left/right margin spacing (keeping forum fluid). So prosilver, no matter what size resolution is used by people would fit the screen having same margin space left and right showing background, so the forum more or less fills full screen. As right now doing it the way you do, having that max-width used, anyone using a high res screen is going to have a small forum in middle with load of background showing left and right. It doesn't really suit all screen resolution sizes - not I think like using margin spacing would left and right instead and keeping it a fluid style
viewtopic.php?f=84&t=45739&start=160 is why. Several professionals and styles authors weighed in before that decision was made and it even turned into a heated discussion...
Also your question leaves out one of the big reasons this was done: those with really large monitors. The forum just looks wrong.
I think max width is required mainly cuz it doesn't look super stretched on high resolution screens. However, I feel the max width used in phpbb site is too small. I will be increasing the max width on my site to something like 1100-1250px. Ymmv..
mrgtb wrote:Something I wanted to touch on about the ProSilver style. I was reading somebody mention on another forum tonight why it uses an 850px max-width style and have been thinking same thing myself.
How comes you do that, rather than using gutter left/right margin spacing (keeping forum fluid). So prosilver, no matter what size resolution is used by people would fit the screen having same margin space left and right showing background, so the forum more or less fills full screen. As right now doing it the way you do, having that max-width used, anyone using a high res screen is going to have a small forum in middle with load of background showing left and right. It doesn't really suit all screen resolution sizes - not I think like using margin spacing would left and right instead and keeping it a fluid style
viewtopic.php?f=84&t=45739&start=160 is why. Several professionals and styles authors weighed in before that decision was made and it even turned into a heated discussion...
Also your question leaves out one of the big reasons this was done: those with really large monitors. The forum just looks wrong.
My comments made at time was about max-width (or was it min-width) being too wide to suit 19inch monitors. You couldn't see any forum page background at first when wider before on my 19inch monitor. Not talking too wide in general if using a fluid style, that works totally different from a fixed width. I'm not even saying it should be fluid, I was asking why the decision was make to go with a max-width over using a fluid style and adding left and right margin to control width of forum against body background. Yes, I get it probably does look too wide on large width monitors with high res doing it that way also.
Although, I was still wondering which is the worst of the two style methods overall? Reason I asked is because I do notice XenForo decided to go other route of having it fluid with their default style and using margin spacing left and right, rather than going with a max-width to avoid that problem of the forum looking too narrow on wide high res screens. Guess you can't win either way?
I feel max-width approach is probably the most practical (and common) approach used in responsive design. The style itself is fluid but you add the max-width to it to control what is the maximum size you want it to go. When I create responsive design, I start maximizing the window until the styles starts to look stretchy and ugly and use that as the max width. It gives you more control on how your page will look for all higher resolution screens.
That has been discussed to death already. There are pros and cons to max-width solution. You might feel it looks better, but from a usability standpoint having a max-width is better.
It is a heated discussion that has already taken place and died. prosilver has been around so long that individuals have become overly a custom too it and are unwilling to break out of the comfort level of change. If we introduced a new theme to the eco system and had no clue what a forum was supposed to look like today you would never end up with the current or previous method as they are both inferior for several reasons.
Ideally you should have a customized environment per device not resolution. As resolution is not n object we can dictate. Since it is only a one sided scale. That is to say we know it starts at 0 but their is no end point. Their are now 5k desktop resolutions people This is a loosing battle for the resolution based approach to design.
We can however ascertain three or four unique interfaces for different environments. That is to say a single stacked version for mobile.Possibly a two column approach for the tablet. One or two versions designed to work for the desktop environment the only difference being the addition of a new column for larger windows.
This is just a generic example of how to handle this type problem not specifically how we should handle prosilver. You get the idea though. You in essence should be developing four versions of an interface for an application and field them to these devices but its not that easy as browsers have not yet fully caught up to this so we have to rely on hacky ways of implementation or just fall back on an inferior method of basing everything off resolutions and hoping that those who take over in the future understand this as the case as well as comprehend our rational in implimentation.