Safari doesn't use the entire screen's width as IE - Any ideas?

Hello,

I've noticed that in many websites Safari (and FireFox by the way) presents the content only on part of the screen's width, in some websites the content captures about only 50% of the screen's width (when the window is maximized of course).
For example in: http://www.spiegel.de/ you will notice that a lot of the right area is not even used.

When I browse these websites in Internet Explorer it shows them as it should using 100% of the screen's width.
Any idea how to resolve it?

That link on both my Safari and IE are aligned left, with space far to the right. Do you mean on IE it centers in the middle of your screen? Or it actually spans all the way across 100%?

The table on that site is set to align to the right. It's meant to be that way. I doubt IE is ignoring the code and rendering it its own way.

Are you using both on the same screen?

Obviosly, there will be a lot of extra space on a widescreen iMac or MacBook than there would be on a traditional 4x3 monitor.

IE, maximized on a widescreen display, will show great gobs of padding:

Wide screen of course!
So does it mean that a lot of the websites today are not designed for widescreen displays?

Websites aren't really designed for any type of display, it's just a website, are you saying you want it to be big enough to take up your entire screen or what?

royc said:

Wide screen of course!!!
So does it mean that a lot of the websites today are not designed for widescreen displays?

Click to expand...

I guess you could say that. The problem with coding a website to fit just one particular screen is you make it very difficult for everyone else to view the site. Who know might happen in the future. With most everyone buying widescreen monitors these days, a day may come when sites will be developed for the wider screen. But I wouldn't look for it any time soon.

royc said:

Hello,

I've noticed that in many websites Safari (and FireFox by the way) presents the content only on part of the screen's width, in some websites the content captures about only 50% of the screen's width (when the window is maximized of course).
For example in: http://www.spiegel.de/ you will notice that a lot of the right area is not even used.

When I browse these websites in Internet Explorer it shows them as it should using 100% of the screen's width.
Any idea how to resolve it?

Click to expand...

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54932&highlight=maximize
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54705&highlight=maximize

The Vindicat3d said:

Websites aren't really designed for any type of display, it's just a website, are you saying you want it to be big enough to take up your entire screen or what?

Click to expand...

Yes I do.

Technologist is correct.

Here is a screen shot of your URL on IE 7. Windows XP Pro SP2 on a Widescreen Laptop. IE is Full Screen.

Thanks guys.
Yep, I've realised that I've tested IE on a normal screen and Safari on a wide screen.
Which leads me to ask if there might be a utility out there that sort this issue for wide screen users by stretching the web site's width.

royc said:

Thanks guys.
Yep, I've realised that I've tested IE on a normal screen and Safari on a wide screen.
Which leads me to ask if there might be a utility out there that sort this issue for wide screen users by stretching the web site's width.

Click to expand...

Webdesigners can use a so-called "floating" design to make their sites stretch and expand according to the user's window size.

Spiegel.de uses a "fixed" width design, which looks as though it's optimized for 1024x768 screens.

A good example of a floating design is Mac-forums. Resize your window to make it wider and the "Quick reply" box and the rest of the posts will be stretched horizontally to match your new window size.

There's no real way around this issue though... you could write to Spiegel and tell them to get with the times.

Note to non-german speakers: Spiegel is a magazine and the equivalent of Times or Newsweek...

It would distort and tear up the website.

Sites that are built for widescreen will stretch, such as this one.

Windows loves full screens, which causes the padding effect as seen above. OS X loves windows, and is more efficient ie.

It will be interesting to see if more web developers adopt a wide screen format for web sites. It seems like computer monitor size are going by the way of television screen size... widescreen. It would make sense, IMO.

This will always be a problem. Widescreens look cool and are great for watching movies, but are the most impractical computer screen ever thought of. Computer screens (and websites) are primarily used to view text. Text is primarily printed on paper. And most things on paper are viewed in portrait format. A single page from a typical book is taller than it is wide. The lined notebook paper kids use in school is taller than it is wide.

Although we read lines of text from left to right, we are accustomed to reading pages from top to bottom. And long single lines of text are especially hard to read. That's why Bibles, newpapers, and magazines always use multiple columns on a page.

What we really need to do is throw away all our books and go back to reading everything off scrolls. This would retrain everyone's minds to view text in a widescreen format and then the dimensions of the computer screen will once again make sense. ;D

Actually widescreen displays make perfect sense to me:

One column for content, plenty of screen space at the side for other windows, applets etc.

Widescreens also really show how Windows' default behaviour of maximizing everything doesn't really make much sense.

Windscreens can also in many cases be *gasp* rotated 90 degrees for portrait viewing on web sites ad documents!

However I will side with the *what possible reason can you have for needing sites to be full screen* crowd. Then again I use a 30" screen at work a nd a 24" screen at home.

Jaygray said:

This will always be a problem. Widescreens look cool and are great for watching movies, but are the most impractical computer screen ever thought of. Computer screens (and websites) are primarily used to view text.

Click to expand...

Tell that to the people who work in design and make the graphics for your "text-laden" websites. Tell that to photographers, tell that to those who work in broadcast/video, Widescreen is by far a better format.
Just because your end-result printed work isn't widescreen, doesn't mean that a widescreen would not have helped the designer who did the layout you see in your printed books.

Example:
A book/magazine/periodical is, as you put it, "portrait".
Now... open it.
What do you see?.... the book is no longer "taller than it is wide".
It is the opposite.

Designers don't do something one page at a time. We work on multiple pages at once. What if something is a two-page spread? You need to see both pages together... like it would appear if a book was open.

D3v1L80Y said:

Tell that to the people who work in design and make the graphics for your "text-laden" websites. Tell that to photographers, tell that to those who work in broadcast/video, Widescreen is by far a better format.
Just because your end-result printed work isn't widescreen, doesn't mean that a widescreen would not have helped the designer who did the layout you see in your printed books.

Example:
A book/magazine/periodical is, as you put it, "portrait".
Now... open it.
What do you see?.... the book is no longer "taller than it is wide".
It is the opposite.

Designers don't do something one page at a time. We work on multiple pages at once. What if something is a two-page spread? You need to see both pages together... like it would appear if a book was open.

Click to expand...

I was being a little sarcastic (I thought it was hilarious), but as you point out, there are two points of view.

Artists and designers will always lean towards a landscape view. This has been the case for centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio).

And you are correct, 2 page spreads in magazines are viewed in landscape format.

But the same magazines print multiple columns of text on the same page rather than long lines of text running all the way across the page. I was just pointing out that making all websites in "widescreen" format would not necessarily make the average site any easier to view.

Sorry, but WHO are these people that view web pages in full screen?