Strategies for Handling Multiple Screen Resolutions and Aspect Ratios in Web Development

Question

Back in the day, 800 x 600 was the screen resolution to design for - and maybe 640 x 480. Then along came 1024 x 768, etc, etc, etc.

But then it gets worse: now we have

Answer 1

Your site can't work perfectly for every display. Even if you had enough hours in the day (or should I say year/decade) to design for every possible display, you'd have to do it over every time a new device comes out.

In my development, I still religiously try to avoid horizontal scrolling, and that isn't too hard with floating divs / variable-width divs. But beyond that, we really are at the "there's an app for that" cross-roads, where you need a specially designed display for specific devices.

One strategy I use is to reduce dependence on a single display -- a customer probably doesn't need to see your entire web page to do what they came to do. You can parse-out functionality to smaller/simpler web pages that scale better on differently-sized devices.

At work, I have a little more "power", as it were -- I can develop internal web apps that are "designed to run on...some specific browser, some specific display setting, etc. -- use other configurations at your own risk". This, only after getting the managers to agree that spending an extra week in development (and even more in upgrades / future maintenance) just to placate that one vegetarian at the other end of campus who refuses to use IE really isn't worth the cost. In that case, we need another Timmy, not a more flexible web app that can look good on his favorite non-IE browser.