How can I make my web forms "browser independent"

[soskinny]

This must be the oldest question in the book, but when I searched this forum I found it alarmingly absent. My client wants my web form to fit into his browser without scrollbars no matter what browser/screen resolution or whatever. I am assuming that it is a screen resolution thing at this point, but am not sure. I cannot be the only person to have faced this issue... Please tell me there is a simple answer. Or just an answer.

[nemaroller]

Well, here's my take on the subject....

In a normal scenario, when you are developing for the Internet to be served by any amount of different browsers... there is NO absolute sure fire way to squeeze your page into any browser without scrollbars.

There's a few reasons for this:
1) Web content does not have access to the system to command a local application on the client to resize itself, nor to change screen resolution. The reason stems from security, otherwise, i coud put up a website that made a window so small, you would never know it was there, and it could keep popping advertisements from my site, or worse things.

2) With people adding pop-up blockers, extra toolbars, the task becomes even more difficult. It is harder to estimate the screen real estate even with Jscript.

3) It's difficult enough styling a web page to be viewed the same in all browsers, much less try to forgo scrollbars.

Now, that said...



1) Javascript can instruct a browser to open a new 'window' of a certain size and look. Not all browsers have to follow Javascript's commands however, and further, users can disable javascript if they so desired.

2) A thin client application could be installed on the client (provided they hit 'yes' to run your component), to open up windows locally and connect securely to your web server. But that's a lot of work to remove scrollbars. Flash presentations and interfaces operate in this manner.

Tell your client to look at any number of sites, including Ebay, Barnes and Nobles, Amazon.com, and then he will realize what he is asking is impossible.

The best you can do is keep your pages fit a 800x500 space, which allows room for toolbars on the top, status bars on the bottom, browser tabbing on the left... etc. When the browser opens maximized, you should at the very minimum NOT have a horizontal scroll bar. A Vertical bar may always be there however.

I think recent web stats state most people are browsing at 1024x768, so an 800x500 to 900 x 600 screen space should keep bars to a minimum.

[soskinny]

Thanks for your input! I hate to say this but I think phrased my question very poorly. I may need to repost this as a different subject. I'm not worried about different types of browsers, I'm worried about different settings on the computers that are browsing. If there is no surefire way to make a page fit all situations, what is the best bet? By the way, at the meeting I just said "well your machine is on a diffent resolution" to avoid seeming ignorant or incompetant (though I am both!) and he smugly went from web page to web page with each of them fitting snugly into the browser window.

Also- browser window size doesn't matter. I think I can safely insist on the form being "maximized" since there are so many elements on it.