While I personally have no problems (I have a 22" widescreen monitor), I agree this should be fixed, from a webdesign standpoint it is indeed a no-no. However, I suggest still having a max-width for the text so posts doesn't get wider than now, I personally love the look of the forum so

What kind of resolution are you using?

As far as I can see the layout fits entirely on a 1024 pixel wide screen resolution. Indeed you have to maximize the window then but today 1024 is really low res, and so I think it's reasonable to ask the user to maximize the window if they use low res devices.
A lot of websites today are redesigned with a 950px+ minimum width. For example BBC News, which surely have far more considerations and user testing and guidelines than I ever had when redesigning the base PunBB forum.

Now assuming you maximize the window, you can zoom up the text size while keeping the same layout. In Google Chrome and I think Firefox as well you just press:

CTRL + Alt + Mouse wheel to size the text
CTRL Numpad 0 to rest the text size

However in recent browsers like IE7 the default is to resize the whole page, images and layout included (which sucks, imho).

If you CAN resize the text and you still don"t like it then can you make a screenie and post it to imageshack or something? Otheriwse I'm not sure I'll understand what the problem is.

Now as for using a flexible layout on a forum, I agree it is a good idea in general.
This design could work on a flexible layout. Creating a crossbrowser flexible layout is more difficult. One thing I don't like about flexible layouts is that it can look bad when it's too wide or too small. You have to use tricks to make min and max widths and make it work in IE6!
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Raichu wrote:

The whole point about the way HTML and the web was designed was so that the browser can format the page to fit it in its window. Artificially setting the text width is a bad thing (IMHO). Forcing a user to have to scroll horizontally is a bad thing (search for advice on site design).

I'm sorry but I think you are quite sure of yourself here? First off while I agree with the idea of flexible layout I don't think the purpose of the web and the HTML markup had anything to do with layout. Formatting yes, layout no. CSS is really not a good language for layout and you have to use all sorts of tricks and hoops to get what you want. For starters there isn't even real "columns" of text as you can see in magazines. In case of a flexible layout it's quite a challenge to make fixed size columns next to flexible size columns in modern CSS and maintain compatibility with IE6.

I could work on that but I have to admit I'm not fully convinced in the one hand and I don't have much incentive to do that right now, I'm busy redesigning the homepage and then the rest of the main site.

cangy wrote:

unfortunately, that doesn't work very well in the study pages cos of the lack of semantic markup

I could put some paragraphs in place of DIVs but other than that what are your suggestions?

ファブリス wrote:

Also the font size is actually confortable on this forum you know, that's a big pet peeve of mine too. 13px it is. Try reading this one.

But why even specify a pixel size? The browser lets me set the font size I want, why not leave it at that? Now of course your 13px are better than what some other sites use, but I honestly don't understand this obsession with tiny fonts. (And I'm 24 and have good eyesight...)

What I mean by flexible is that the text wraps to fit your window width, so that there is no need for horizontal scrolling.

However, even at full screen (1300 pixels wide), this page still gives me horizontal scrolling (admittedly it's only the margins that I can't see). But I don't want to have my window occupy the whole screen I want to see my other windows and stuff. If a web page needs horizontal scrolling at more than say 600 pixels, then that's bad design, but I'll emphasize that that's my personal preference. I know others have different preferences (and I'm pretty sure even my own web site doesn't quite follow that--my banner is 635).

BTW I like the Firefox3 zoom feature that zooms the whole page. I used to hate before that it would only adjust the text. After all, if I have trouble reading the text, then why won't I will trouble looking at small pictures? Sometimes images are even used for preformatted text.

Anyway, my point is that I prefer not to have to use full-screen mode. I often have several windows open and I don't want one window to hide all the others. And I need to zoom in so I can read comfortably. If it's possible to fix the code so that it doesn't require a 1300+ window size that would be appreciated.

I think the standart resolution is 1280x800.

Here's the top 10 resolution settings from Google Analytics for this forum:

Resolution / Visits / Percentage of all visits (last 30 days)

1. 1280x800     12,106  34.85% 
2. 1024x768     5,945   17.12% 
3. 1280x1024    5,563   16.02% 
4. 1680x1050    3,032   8.73%   
5. 1440x900     2,689   7.74%   
6. 1920x1200    1,304   3.75%   
7. 1400x1050    532     1.53%   
8. 1600x1200    461     1.33%   
9. 320x396      428     1.23%   
10. 1280x768    394     1.13%   

Interesting number 9, I think it's  iPhone?

Compared to several years ago there are many "widescreen" resolutions, especially from laptops. This makes it rather awkward to maximize the window on those desktops with websites that use 100% window width. For example, on my monitor which is 1680x1050 I always have the browser windows centered. But the extra wide space is great for IDE applications like Aptana/Eclipse/Photoshop.

?t should be noted also that just as there are Greasemonkey scripts there is also an extension to add your CSS file to a website domain or URL, it works with Stylish. That allows anyone to experiment and hack the CSS to make a better iPhone layout or fluid layout etc.

mentat_kgs wrote:

I think the standart resolution is 1280x800.

Yeah, the laptop I'm using now is 1280x800. I would have got a bigger one, but I decided on a laptop with a 13" screen because I'm traveling a lot, and the weight makes a difference.

Sorry I meant Firefox+Stylish extension, see the sticky topic in the Feedback forum.