Are Our Trusted Designers Fooling Us?, about side cushions

[Lightson]

Hi, We had a site designed by our designers. Everything looks nice, BUT if you view our site in resolution 800 x 600 there is absolutely no space (cushion) on left and right sides of the page.

So basically, it doesn't look too good. I mentioned it to them and here is the reply I got.

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Thank you for your reply. We have just discussed this issue with our designers today evening and it seems like quite a difficult fix at this stage of the project. As per the internet standards all websites are designed at a fixed pixel size of 780 pixels to make it uniformely appear on all screen resolutions above 800 X 600. In order to make a ""Cushion"" appear on the sides of all the pages we'll be required to reduce the size of over 150 PHP files, with 780 pixels width which make take us 1 week (minimum) to implement.

Moreover, this would also affect the alignment of all pages and their table structures which may further take us 1 week to re-align properly hence, we
do not recommend implementing this change at all. Still, in case you need to get the re-alignment of all pages done, we shall be charging $1500 additional for this as this includes minimum of 15 man days of work and we would be required to re-build all pages from scratch.
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So ... what do you think?rn and code?

[Angel]

That's bogus...either your designer didn't create a good website for you in the beginning, therefore changes are hard to implement, or your designer is cheating you.

Can I see the site? I might be able to help.

[Nigel Lew]

If you can send a link I can tell you how complicated it would be to fix the situation.

Conversely, lets not jump all over the designers just yet. Is there some specific need to accomondate an 800x600 audience? I build everything fluid or fixed width to start at 1024x768. You have not been able to buy a monitor that defaults to 800x600 in years.

I suppose there are some accessibility matters to think about but I don't believe that to be the issue in this case.

At any rate, what they say about page widths is accurate. They are not blowing smoke. However to fix it should not necessarily take that long but take note you have to shrink everything, not just a line or two of code.

hope that helps
Nigel

[Angel]

However to fix it should not necessarily take that long but take note you have to shrink everything, not just a line or two of code.

No, if you just reduce the layout a few pixels, everything would be fixed. I've created many layouts in 800x600 a few years back before, so I would know how it's done. Also, there are people who still use that resolution (I, for one, still own a very old laptop which has a max resolution of that).

[Geoserv]

Did they create it using CSS? If so, it should be fairly simple to fix and it wouldn't take a week. I noticed they mentioned tables in their reply, that concerns me, if they used tables for the layout without CSS, then yes it could take a week.

Geoserv.

[rudedog]

reduce the size of over 150 PHP files,

ok, some of this could be a matter of opinion, like the 800/600 thing. personally I would get rid of the developer. if they cant build variable width sites i wouldn't even consider them. the site should fit the screen, regardless of the size, thats a matter of opinion though. then again i think the last 800/600 screen i've had was in monochrome.

even though im not an expert coder or anything i just fight my way through it. every php site I've ever worked on had two page's that controlled the width of template, the css.css page and the php page. everything else is pulled from a data base, or multiple databases. actually on the various sites ive worked on once the basic templates are built or modified I can change sizes and colors in a matter of seconds. there's something seriously wrong with modifying 150 php files.
i don't even think that that there are 150 php pages in all three of my sites put together.
and one of them is huge.

Are they designing a fully custom cms? or intranet?