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Screen resolutions/image sizes for gallery websites

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  • 13-06-2008 8:11am
    #1
    sineadw
    Registered Users Posts: 3,319 ✭✭✭


    Hi all. I'm a keen amateur photographer (usually found prowling the photog forum here) and multimedia/design student. I'm currently building a small non-flash gallery website, and am running up against some layout difficulties. Hoping for some advice here :)

    I'm keeping things simple - css/html only - a sparse home page, small gallery, link to Myspace and email and maybe a link to a photoblog (if I ever get around to taking a picture again.. :( ). I'm working on some design templates at the moment and was wondering what sizes people keep in mind? I've recently stopped designing for 800x600 altogether, but I've discovered the nifty little Eeepc, and the res in the one I'm getting is 800x600... I've seen quite a few people with them recently. I for one plan on ditching the laptop altogether in favour of one, with a super-duper desktop for the heavy stuff (both will still cost me less than a decent spec laptop..).

    I'm now toying with the idea of expandable rather than fixed-width divs and an overlaid gallery window for the main images (a-la lightview, or lightbox, keeping the main images 780 px or so wide at most. I'm wondering how people work around this issue? What size images would you use on a site of this nature? What screen resolutions do you keep in mind? How do you work the sizing issue? Would these javascript scripts cause issues with pop-up blockers??

    Any help greatly appreciated, as I'm now starting to dream in div widths... :rolleyes:


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    #2
    daymobrew
    Registered Users Posts: 6,511 ✭✭✭daymobrew


    Visitor stats is a good way to find out what your target audience is using.
    I use statcounter.com. I recently used it to decide how wide to make a site (osCommerce/tables site :o ). I found that 1024x768 or 1280x1024 accounted for over 75% of visitors with 1024x768 making up most of those) so I made the site visible (without horizontal scrolling) for those visitors.

    I would think that 1024x768 is a reasonable lower size.


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    #3
    Liam Byrne
    Closed Accounts Posts: 18,163 ✭✭✭✭Liam Byrne


    Two things to bear in mind:

    1) The user's screen size doesn't - unfortunately - actually reflect their browser window size.....not everyone browses websites maximised

    2) If you have access to server-side technology, such as PHP, you can (up to a maximum based on the source file dimensions and file size - no point making the site TOO slow or taking up all your hosting space with 3 or 4 images) get the images to resize to the window.

    Check out phpthumb for the gist of this, and send me a PM if you want to see how that can be integrated into the site design.

    P.S. Kudos on not going the Flash route.....I've seen far too many photographers go that route and then wonder why they can't update their site or be found in search engines!!! Mad, considering that all of the standard stuff that Flash used to be used for can be done without it nowadays, so your site doesn't have to be crippled.


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    #4
    sineadw
    Registered Users Posts: 3,319 ✭✭✭sineadw


    Thanks for the replies so far :) Gonna check out that php thing, but to be honest I've only dabbled in it as a scripting language. Scares the bejesus out of me a the best of times...

    A few of the guys on the photog forum have suggested using lightbox or similar. I was also hoping to stay away from javascript as I've seen issues with script blockers etc. Is this really a big problem in your experience? Or any other issues with JS? Am I better off sticking with css/html only?


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