making things proportional

[Juggalo Bags]

I was just wondering when you make a layout how are you supposed to know the difference from how it looks in ps then in a browser...like how big to make the graphis and the content boxes and headers and what not...cuz it may look small in ps but it might be huge in a browser.???

thanks
bags

[theKeeper]

Actually...

Whatever size it appears in PS will be the exact same size in any browser; visually speaking.

If you want to see how much space on your screen your design takes up, just hit the F key a couple times. Hit it again to return to normal viewing mode.

Generally a designer knows/should know how wide a design can be, based on the target viewing audience or by using general Web standards.

Most sites these days are usually an 8x6 design. This actually means the width is about 760px. The height can vary, but if you want a single screenload with no scroll you should aim for a height of 435-450px.

The general size of your graphics should depend on a couple things...
1) What the subject/purpose of the site is.
2) Whether graphics are really that essential to the site's design/purpose.
3) What you target screen resolution will be.

For myself, i'll usually create a design in PS that exactly matches the width/height i want to use. That way when i have PS cut it up the graphics exactly fit into the layout i'll be using. Otherwise, if you start with a document at 800px wide, you'll have to fool around with extracting border images/cells that you don't actually use in the html version.

Hope that helps.