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Opera7.11 & Mozilla1.4 web page weirdness (done for now)


chris z
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ok, here's the best explanation i can give without posting screen shots (which i can't do right now anyway, 'cause i'm at work)..........

 

last week i changed my screen resolution from 800x600 to 1024x768. all went fine & everything looks great after some minor font size tweaking. except........ when i view certain web sites with Moz or Opera, the pages load fully but don't fill the whole browser. there's always a blank spot, about 2 inches wide on the right part of the web page being viewed. not blank, as in nothing there, but blank as in no web info/text/images, but only the background colour of that particular page filling the space.

 

here's an example (sorta) of what i'm talking about. (just pretend the text below is a web site & this text should fill up your whole browser)

 

it's sorta like if what i'm typing here is a web page,

& all of this text should fill this whole box from left to right

but everything to the right (look right) of where i'm typing

is blank, even though you're still getting all of the info.  

sorta like word wrapping. (blah, blah, blah, blah, blah)

 

there's 3 sites i've found this happens with (so far).

cnn.com

comedycentral.com

netmail.verizon.net

 

i'm sure there's others out there. i just haven't hit upon them yet.

 

so, if i've explained the situation clearly enough, the question is........is there a setting somewhere in the browsers that can change things to make sure web sites use the whole browser?

 

also note, this doesn't affect Konqueror web browser, just Moz & Opera. and, it doesn't happen in a Window$ environment because i've tested this here at work on Win2K.

 

TIA for any input........

 

Chris

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hi chris,

 

(someone please correct me if I'm wrong ...)

 

what you encounter is how different browsers are handling and interpreting html and css code, in your examples I think it's about fixed tabels, borders and something like that.

Mozilla and Opera are displaying 'exactly' all the mess the web designer/webmaster has done when writing the page for IE only - IE and Konqui are more 'tolerant' (don't know how to word it) about the W3 standard.

 

In Opera the only thing I know is, for these sites:

View - Zoom - 120%, or faster: look at the zoom button on the right :P

Don't know in Mozilla.

 

The good thing about this is: you see the quality of the web designer!

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thanks anna,

 

i was sorta thinking along those same lines......that's it's the web site's design, not the browser's fault. i ran 2 of those web sites that are giving me trouble through W3C & they both failed miserably. still doesn't explain why they look fine in Window$, though. :?

 

i'll play with the "zoom" when i get a chance. i also found some things in the Opera website faqs about tweaking page views, etc.

 

i'll post results when i get a chance to try things out.

 

Chris

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And when you are at the Opera site and at home - don't forget to download some WONDERFUL skins. They are lovely! When you click on download they will install straight away into /home/%user/.opera/skins, each skin is one file.

 

And the new Beta Releases of Opera are providing a nice surprise. No more image ads, but pure text based ads in a smaller window related to your interests. I'm getting 90% text links to Linux - they look the same as with Google.

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Yep, blame it on the webmaster. Quickly checking the cnn.com source:

<table width="770" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="speak: none">

The content is stuck at a max of 770 pixels wide here. Add a few for the window border and the scroll bar and it fills your 800 wide screen, but leaves a empty space on anything larger.

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update.........

 

tried the zoom feature. it fills the page up more, but makes things horribly large, so i gave up on that. started playing around with style sheets. that seems to have some possibilites, but i didn't have enough time to thoroughly look into. i also noticed the "table width" settings that scoopy noted on the CNN site. why do they do things like that, anywho?

 

so, if i can't change things by playing with the style sheets some more, i'll just let it be. and, anna, i did (briefly) check out the skins for Opera. some nice stuff there! thanks for the info! :D

 

Chris

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There is a lot of debate over developing web pages and one is whether or not to define the width or set it to 100%. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Setting the pixel width of the page (and many designers set it to fill an 800x600 resolution because that's the most common) allows the content to look exactly the way the developer intended it to no matter what the resolution. The disadvantage is the white space as you noted. To me the determining factor is the kind of layout you have. If you have a mostly text based web site then it's okay to set it to 100% (IMO). But if you've created your web page and have images that are used to add a certain effect by being placed a certain way on the website you can loose that effect when it stretches out to fill any screen. Just my two cents. Like I said, there is a lot of debate over the subject. Here's a link that discusses that dilemma if you're interested http://www.theallineed.com/webmasters/web_...dth_dilemma.htm

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just to update & close (for now)............

 

played with style sheets a bit, but that didn't seem to help. guess i'm at the mercy of the web designers for now. :x maybe i'll stumble on to something. if so, i'll post it here. thanks for everybody's help & suggestions, though.

 

gonna go check out those skins now! :)

 

Chris

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