hows this for making your page match ads?

[RoySpencer]

We'll go live with this version next week:

http://www.videoweather.com/states/test_sort.htm

[Quadrille]

Hmmmm.

What percentage of visitors will require the dreaded horizontal scroll to see the whole table (necessary) before seeing the ads (optional)?

[RoySpencer]

Q:
Do you think the content part is too wide? That would be good input for us, because ALL of our pages are wide (we're used to big monitors, I guess). Do you think we should move the ads to the top?
-Roy

[Blue]

Hi Roy,

If you are using absolute values, the widest (total width) you should code for is about 760pixels. If you do that you'll be targeting those with 800x600 resulution and up.

Google's AdSense skyscraper ads run 120x600px, so you'd have to make your table width (which is now 728px) 640px max.

[Quadrille]

It's very easy to forget that a lot of folk still have small screens - or use 'small screen' settings ;)

I saw it at home, and saw the potential problem; here at work, I see your table overlapping the ads - now, don't be too alarmed, the techies here are famous for weird network settings - but it's worth checking.

As a general point, however, I'd go with Blue's recommendations, but do try and see how they look on a small screen.

You might get away with a bit by changing fonts or font sizes a little (but I'm no sure how to minimise user override problems there!

And yes, I'd put the bar at the top - and it does fit well with the page :)

[RoySpencer]

Blue & Q:
Thanks much for the insight and advice...we'll discuss possible changes. Come to think of it, one of the problems I'm having with these ads is I guess I don't know how you are supposed to get the ad to be positioned to the right of the rest of the content. The way I'm doing it now (which I'm sure isn't the best) is, if the content is 728 pixels, and the ad is 120 pixels wide, then I put BOTH in an outer table that is at least 728+120=848 pixels wide. But I have a feeling this isn't the preferred way of doing it.
OH...also, you might not have seen what is now operational: please look at the final version of these at

Nevermind...I figured out that the tables need to be in adjacent *cells* in an outer table, then the table width can float with the browser window.

-Roy

[Quadrille]

Much better (Home Puter!).

I'll take another look at work, but I'm guessing that you're revised table will sort the overlap, and the tweaked design will assist the 'excess width' issue.

[foghorn]

You may also want to know that with the standard settings on Firebird, a Mozilla browser growing in popularity, none of your data shows up. Only the google ads are showing...

[Quadrille]

... And I'm still seeing the two tables overlap. I think you'll need to put adsense in a new right hand column of your data table.

And as Mozilla is unhappy, you might find it useful to install Opera (http://www.opera.com/) - Opera is deliberately intolerant of non-standard code, and so enables you to spot the bad news before you go live!

[RoySpencer]

I just looked at our log stats, and Firebird is 0.3% of our traffic, and Opera is 0.3% of our traffic....is this worth worrying about?

I'll fix the table problem...and I'll look into Opera for testing as well. Thanks for the input, guys.

[Quadrille]

To clarify; opera is (for most) only really useful as a 'site tester', while Firebird is a useful indicator of the way Mozilla is headed.

It's a sad fact of life that "IE Rules" despite the increasing number of quality rivals. I always work in IE, not because I like it, but because I want to see what the 'average Joe' will see.

But if a minor tweak will satisfy most, there's probably a 5% increase in visitors to play for. I always test in Opera, but if I cannot easily spot the latest muckup from M$ that produced the incompatability, I rarely lose sleep!

But does anyone know Linux' market share?

BTW, this is relevant to this thread, as it's in the handling of javascript that browsers diverge most dangerously, and losing adsense can be the result ;)

[RoySpencer]

thanks, Q, good input.

[RoySpencer]

OK, I downloaded Opera and fixed the pages so that they display exactly the same in Opera and IE. I'm assuming the table isn't rendering in Firebird because of the JS we're using that allows the table columns to be sorted, so until our Firebird traffic gets significantly greater than 0.3%, I'm not going to worry about it.

BTW, moving the Adsense ads on most of our pages to the top has has a small but significant improvement in our CTR for three days straight now.

I testified in congress today...that was a trip.