[Phil Sherry]

Something which drives me batty is the way browsers handle centering a site. If it doesn't scroll, it's in one "centre," yet it jogs over a few pixels when the page scrolls. What's that all about? Why does it seem to have two centres?

Not sure what I'm on about? Check these pages: Example 1 & Example 2

I want answers.

[Peder Rice]

Well, I don't know why they have persisted. I code a great deal of web applications, and I often have Javascript events that expand/contract the page. When the page grows, it often throws things a little off, since it's now the new center alignment.

I understand why it performs as it does (it's just a window filling all of its space), but I would imagine that a persistent scroll bar would alleviate this problem.

[piot]

A web page that requires vertical scrolling adds a scroll bar to the right hand side...... which shifts all the content to the left!

NOTE. Your two examples both require a scrollbar on screens of 1024 x 768 or below. Currently, that's about 80% of web traffic.

[Phil Sherry]

Originally Posted by piot

A web page that requires vertical scrolling adds a scroll bar to the right hand side...... which shifts all the content to the left!

Yes, but the content isn't shifted over by the same pixel width as the scroll bar. If it was, I wouldn't be moaning about it, because I could handle that. It's just a few pixels, not about 15-20px, which is what yer average scroll bar weighs in at.

I still want answers.

[bwahahax]

Because the content is centred it won't move over to the left the entire width of the scrollbar, only half of the width. The browser removes half of the scrollbar's width from the padding on the left of the content, and half of the scrollbar's width from the padding on the right.

With a screen ruler I can see that the padding is reduced by 8px on either side, for a total reduction of 16px, which, on my system, is the exact width of the scrollbar. Other OS's might have different scrollbar widths, so the padding reduction may vary slightly.

[Chris O'Brien]

When you say 'few pixels' do you mean roughly 8? The scroll bars in OS X are 16px wide, I think, so it would make the centring shift by half the offset, no?

Edit:
Beaten to the post! That's what I get for going and watching telly before finally posting my reply.

[Phil Sherry]

Okay, I'll probably settle for that. And I'm not even watching tele (although, we do have two in the office).

It's still annoying, though.

[piot]

Hey Phil, only just noticed your sig. I'm not being tetchy here, but how come you had this very basic problem with web layout and yet you have actually written a whole book on web dev?

[Phil Sherry]

Originally Posted by piot

Hey Phil, only just noticed your sig. I'm not being tetchy here, but how come you had this very basic problem with web layout and yet you have actually written a whole book on web dev?

Because I posted the original question from work, where my brain is usually turned off.