Intro + lancia article

[automotive_traveler]

Hi everyone,my name is Rich Truesdell, and while I am not a Lancia owner, I am certainly an enthusiast and know many Lancia owners here in Southern California. I met a few more of them on Saturday and put up a short blog about the drive we took together from Irvine in Orange County to Sun City in Riverside County. You can read about it here (http://automotivetraveler.com/jump/262).

In addition I took some high dynamic range photos of two Lancias and two Fiats, like the shot below, that can be viewed on the blog. Hope you'll take a look.

Best wishes,

Rich Truesdell
Editorial Director, Automotive Traveler (http://automotivetraveler.com/jump/263)

http://www.automotivetraveler.com/images/stories/blogs/richt/090316-7_Orange_Lancia_Fulvia_HF_HDR_image.jpg

[Charley]

Went to look over your web site. I hate to be negative but, although the web site does appear to have interesting articles, I can't even read most of it! For instance on the "2K car challenge" page there is text running over top of and blocking other text. Advertising banners placed directly over text blocking the text,with no apparent close button.Links all over the place,and those annoying mouse over dropdown lists. I don't know if this stuff is just because of my dinosaur computer and monitor,or if it is just the way the web designer wrote it. In my opinion the web site design is terrible !

[automotive_traveler]

Went to look over your web site. I hate to be negative but, although the web site does appear to have interesting articles, I can't even read most of it! For instance on the "2K car challenge" page there is text running over top of and blocking other text. Advertising banners placed directly over text blocking the text,with no apparent close button.Links all over the place,and those annoying mouse over dropdown lists. I don't know if this stuff is just because of my dinosaur computer and monitor,or if it is just the way the web designer wrote it. In my opinion the web site design is terrible !

Charley,

That's not the way it supposed to be. I would like very much to talk to you on the phone to zero-in exactly on what's wrong. I went to the same article with no problem. If you E-mail (mailto:richt@automotivetraveler.com) me your phone number, I can call you so when I talk to my IT guy, I'll know what problems you are experiencing. I will need to know what browser you are using. WE've tested our layout with all current browsers; Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, AOL/Internet Explorer.

Thanks,

Richard Truesdell
Editorial Director, Automotive Traveler

[Charley]

The browser I am using is IE 7 and the computer is running on Windows XP.The problem may be my 15"CRT monitor and the 800x600 resolution ? I asked my son to go to the web site on his computer and all pages appear normal. He has IE 7 browser and a 17"LCD monitor set to 1280x1024 resolution and the computer is running Windows Vista. Must be my dinosaur monitor . I apologize for the negative comments. I guess I need to upgrade to veiw your site. :red face:

[DJ]

IE 7 should present no problems whatsoever. And any decent site should either resize itself to fit an 800 x 600 screen (extremely common) or be built statically at that resolution as a minimum.

[DJ]

...I took some high dynamic range photos of two Lancias and two Fiats, like the shot below, that can be viewed on the blog. Hope you'll take a look.

Hmmm. That Fulvia looks awfully familiar.

http://lancisti.net/photopost/data/500/2007_LA_Concours_pic-3_.jpg

[automotive_traveler]

The browser I am using is IE 7 and the computer is running on Windows XP.The problem may be my 15"CRT monitor and the 800x600 resolution ? I asked my son to go to the web site on his computer and all pages appear normal. He has IE 7 browser and a 17"LCD monitor set to 1280x1024 resolution and the computer is running Windows Vista. Must be my dinosaur monitor . I apologize for the negative comments. I guess I need to upgrade to veiw your site. :red face:

Charley,

Don't worry about the negative comments. While 800x600 is no longer as common as it once was, as someone else mentioned, the website should be compatible with your monitor and properly size itself. I am sending on your particulars to my webmaster, who is out of touch right now, to check on this particular combination. He should be able to duplicate it and possibly come up with a solution in your settings that will work.

I guess the photo of Ed Levin's HF probably fills your screen all by itself. I think I sized it to 800 pixels wide so it would be meaningful.

Best wishes,

Richard Truesdell
Editorial Director
Automotive Traveler Magazine (http://www.automotivetraveler.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=260&Itemid=196)
automotivetraveler.com (http://automotiveytraveler.com/home)

[1,6 HF]

Richard,

I'm running IE 8 at 1280 x 960, and with the site windowed (haven't tried it full-screen) I'm actually getting some of the same overlapping text that Charley's been experiencing.

Yeah, DJ, Richard joined us on the Scorpion run this past Saturday, so my HF and 3 other cars became test subjects for some HDR photography.

[automotive_traveler]

Richard,

I'm running IE 8 at 1280 x 960, and with the site windowed (haven't tried it full-screen) I'm actually getting some of the same overlapping text that Charley's been experiencing.

My IT director got back tome late on Tuesday night and explained the situation to me.

"For over a year, standard web design for most designers is to build for a minimum resolution of 1024 x 768 in keeping with the increase in monitor resolution and the increasing prevalence of widescreen aspect-ration monitors. Anything less and the people with the higher resolutions--who make up 97% of our traffic--get a lot of wasted screen real estate. Scaling images with current browser technology can be done, but it sucks more bandwidth and takes more processing on the user's end, so it's a poor alternative.

As 1,6 HF pointed out, if you do run at higher resolution and shrink the window size you can simulate the adverse effects on the site that you see on a lower-resolution monitor. If I set the template to fixed width instead of making it fluid, I could prevent that and they would get a scroll bar at the bottom, but the widescreen and high resolution people would have blank areas on either side of the page."

With all the content we are trying to display, this is a compromise that we have to deal with, to give the best possible presentation for the maximum number of users. While overall, more than 3% of web users might be using 800 x 600, in our case the number is so small, that we had to make the choice to optimize the display for the mast majority of our users. In our case I had no idea that the number of 800 x 600 users was now so small.

Very sorry that I don't have a better answer for 800 x 600 users, but at least he took the time to fully explain to me the situation. We are responsive and we do listen.

Richard Truesdell
Editorial Director
Automotive Traveler Magazine (http://www.automotivetraveler.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=260&Itemid=196)
automotivetraveler.com (http://automotiveytraveler.com/home)