Re: Games for Learning

At 8:41 AM -0700 5/25/09, Susan N. Smith wrote:
>Students' computers are getting smaller.  Students may be using the new
>mini-laptops with screens that are 1024 x 600.  When you design webpages now,
>do you limit the part of the screen that you use to accommodate these smaller
>computers, or do you aim for the people who have 23" monitors, or is there some
>rule of thumb you use now to accommodate the range of users?
>

It is important to take this sort of thing into account -- mainly in terms of using the bottom of the page as a place to put critical links or buttons.

In my experience, people who use the web are VERY accustomed to scrolling vertically, but conversely find scrolling horizontally very annoying.

That said, the numbers of users using screens narrower than 1024 is rapidly becoming very small except for:

Blackberry users (probably few students have these now)
Ipod touch and Iphone users (but these people become very practiced at using the zoom feature on their devices)

The remaining narrow screen viewers are going to be very accustomed to scrolling sideways to see content. It is probably still a good idea, though, to not put really critical links, buttons or content all the way to the right on 1024 web pages.

Another thing to consider on this is that I believe that all modern browsers now have a built-in zoom feature, which allows users with non-standard setups to change their default zoom level.

-- Randal

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