I have to make a lay-out for a website and I was wondering... If I make a new 1024*768 pixels document (Photoshop) what is the amount of space I should leave open for the toolbars of IE? Or is that just a matter of trail and error?
To be safe I usually leave 40-50px for borders, scroll bars, etc. You might be able to get away with less, you just have to experiment a little. Ideally you could make your site variable width and not have to worry about it, though. (there are advantages and disadvantages of varible width)
but dont forget...people can add all sorts of toolbars to IE... google, real, link bar, hotbar, all sorts of junk (except the google toolbar...best IE plugin ever)
Most of those are on the top, although there are a few (msn search, media bar crap) that are vertical on the side. There's not much you can do about people who browse at 1024x768 or lower and have sidebars. Vertical scrolling should be kept to a minimum, but it's not as bad as horizontal scrolling, from what I understand anyway.
Yeah, horizontal scrolling is a MAJOR nono. The only good site I've seen that had horizontal scrolling was a design company's site which used it to very good effect with Flash, but that's really a different matter. Obviously at some point you'll hit a place where you just can't make the site degrade well in lower resolutions without sacrificing functionality or looks, but it's usually easily achievable if you spend a bit of time thinking about the design.
There are a few Zen Garden examples that pull it off ok: http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=019/019.css http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=037/037.css http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=048/048.css http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=053/053.css http://www.csszengarden.com/?cssfile=058/058.css Of course, the thing that they all have in common (and the only thing that makes it halfway-acceptable) is that you only have to scroll in one direction. Scrolling in two directions is a bad thing.
i would much rather see the zen garden things in a scrolling down fashion then across.... unless i had that new microsoft mouse with side scrolling
Horizontal scrolling is a no no. It is in the human nature to look down at something. When you read books or magazines. When you are eyeing a nice young lady up. Horizontal can be used to good effect if you aren't intending to make the site too 'sticky'.
