I recently got to the bottom of a display issue on my blog. Apparently it has been happening for awhile, and I was never to reproduce it despite checking it on several PCs and also via my Mac – all the machines I checked it on looked fine. Occasionally I have issues with Safari vs. Firefox vs. IE, and this particular one caused issues in Firefox on a PC, but not in IE! Go Figure!
Messed Up Blog
The culprit: Windows has a display option of 120 DPI instead of 96 DPI in the advanced settings of display properties. Well, all of the Windows machines I checked the blog on were at the 96 DPI setting. Enough people contacted me about the issue that it was driving me nuts. I finally managed to reproduce it by setting a display to the 120 DPI which zooms in on content somewhat – and apparently some computers ship with this as the default instead of 96. After spending a lot of time changing fonts in my sidebar, I found out it wasn’t the sidebar at all, but a piece of CSS code for “overflow” that was missing from the navigation menu. Took me awhile to find that one.
It is quite frustrating actually – that all the different browsers, Macs and PCs – and now you have to worry about some burried setting deep in the display properties that most people don’t even worry about. Then trying to figure out the little piece of CSS code you are missing causing the issue. I can only imagine the frustration of someone who does web design for a living. So anyway, sorry to all you 120 DPI folks – I probably scared some of you away.
In my hunt for a solution here and how to check how a page displays on different computers, I found this neat site: Cross Browser Testing . It didn’t let me change the DPI of the screen, but it is nice for checking different browsers and systems. You get five minutes for free.
Hi Ron,
Yeah, I think the one that was giving you problems was separate. I fixed that and was still getting the screwed up screen for the 120 dpi setting. Ultimately I think it is this theme I picked, not completely robust across a lot of configurations. Hopefully all is well now.
Hi Mark,
I came back to follow up on comments – I thought I left one but don’t see it for some reason. Anyways, your site now looks great for me even with NewsGator FeedDemon. Although I did take a look and our laptops are set for 96 dpi, but still had the problem. Maybe it was because of the smaller screen.
Ron
browsershots.org is a great place to check those kinds of things out in the future. I love finally finding something out after being stumped for a long time makes me feel good.
Paul / Roger – I originally went to browsershots, but for some reason it didn’t work with my blog. Kept giving me an error on a “redirect.” Not sure what is up with that.
Mark, try browsershots.org. It’s free and will show you what your site looks like on hundreds of browser/version combinations!
I don’t know if it would have worked for this situation, but it is nice to see what it looks like across platforms, including UNIX-based browsers.
Thanks for the info. Fortunately I’m using IE (I NEVER thought I’d ever say that…)