Showing posts with label website design. Show all posts

Changes and Updates: news and works in progress

This past couple of weeks I've been up to my eyeballs with end of term activities with my kids. Between school shows, swimming exams, Jiu Jitsu, and other year end festivities things have been pretty hectic.

I decided that I'd make some time today to get organised before the summer break starts and my days melt into a constant kid zone. I'm not saying I won't be working through out the summer months, but I also know I'll be busy with the kids and have less time to dedicate to work.

I wanted to not only get organised with my blogs (particularly scheduling posts in advance for www.writersandauthors.info as much as possible. BTW if you want to be hosted there this summer now is the time to email me to set it up ;)), but also get organised with my works in progress.

I've neglected my works in progress so far this year, partly due to my health and partly due to being busy catching up for lost time whilst still dealing with life in the meantime. In order to help get myself back on track, and so that you can more easily follow my progress I've installed progress bars to the side bar. These will also hopefully work as inspiration for myself to finish all the projects I have on the go.

Progress Bars added to website side bar to show writing progress

screenshot showing progress bars

My goal is to finish all books in the editing/illustrating stage over the summer, and hopefully move those in writing to the editing stage.

As a side note, I've also been researching for another project (one that will be my NaNoWriMo for this year). It's something completely different from anything I've ever done before and so I'm starting to plan early. I won't reveal more right now but I will tell you it will be the first book in a Young Adult series, and that I'm beyond excited about it.

I'm also undergoing a slight re-styling of my brand image. This is something I've been playing around with for a while now, making small changes here and there. I want a more solid look to the website, and my branding in general. This is something that will still take a while to fully integrate but I like how it's all coming together.

I'm slowly working on updating this website and tweaking it here and there so that things are easier to find, and so that the general look is more professional. If you have any suggestions please let me know in the comments section and I'll add them to my list ;)

Making Your Website Fit the Screen on All Devices

As you probably know by now, I'm in full prep mode for this years Promo Day event that will be happening on Saturday 30th May at Promo Day. As I like to try and improve the event each year I've been going over the feedback, comments, and testimonials from past events. One thing that has been mentioned by a couple of people is the sizing of the website i.e. it doesn't fit their screen. There were actually only 2 or 3 people that had this issue but that still makes it a problem in my book and so I'm working on resolving the issue.

I checked the website on my smartphone, tablet, laptop, fixed computer, and MAC, and it looked fine on all of them. This made me think that either the problem was 1) specific to the users computer settings or 2) only an issue on certain sized screens.

The first thing I did was make sure that the website was mobile friendly. I then checked it at http://www.studiopress.com/responsive/ to make sure all was working as it should be. This website allows you to insert your website url and then it checks and gives you a preview of how it looks on different mobile devices. All good. The Promo Day site is mobile friendly on all devices.

The next step was to check how it was showing on different desktops. Like I said before, I didn't find any issues when checking on my own various devices but then again mine are all pretty mainstream sizing.

Anyway, I went to http://quirktools.com/screenfly/ and inserted the website url. Turns out the website is fine until I go up to 20" desktop (that's 1600 x 900) and larger. This means that user on a screen bigger than 20" get scroll bars in order to view the whole website. Not a big problem as I made sure the website was centered (notice the space on the left and right of the screen), but still not perfect.

This is how the website looks on a 15" desktop:

Making Your Website Fit the Screen on All Devices

As you can see the whole page fits the screen.

This is what came up when I did 23":

Not good. Only a part of the page is viewable. You then have to use scroll bars at the bottom and right hand side in order to view the rest of the page. Whilst this isn't a major problem (the most important elements are viewable e.g. all of the navigation tabs), it isn't ideal either. I'm now looking into ways to solve the issue and make the website automatically fit to all screen sizes.

I did find this app for Chrome that allows you to resize your desktop to different screen dimensions https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/window-resizer/kkelicaakdanhinjdeammmilcgefonfh. This means that those of you that get scroll bars can change to view the website at 15" (1366 x 768) and have it fit your screen.

I hope to be able to come up with a solution as soon as possible. If you know how to resolve the problem please get in touch. Thanks in advance for your help.

UPDATE:

I think I found the solution :)

I inserted this html code under <head>

<meta content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1' name='viewport'/>

I've had a few friends with 23" and above check the website and they've all said it looks good. No more horizontal scroll bars.

Thanks to everyone who helped. You rock!