Windows Taskbar Display Notes:
If the Taskbar has “Always on top” and “Auto-hide” turned OFF (unticked), then the Taskbar will stay on screen until another program is opened full-screen (either loaded or maximised). The Taskbar will only re-appear if CTRL ESC is pressed or a non-full-screen application is switched to (includes the Desktop).
If the Taskbar has “Always on top” turned ON (ticked) and “Auto-hide” turned OFF (unticked), then the Taskbar will stay on screen even if another program is opened full-screen.
For Windows XP, there is the extra “Lock Taskbar” option which is the same as “Always on top” being set to ON (ticked) and “Auto-hide” being set to OFF (unticked). To use “Lock Taskbar”, right-click the Taskbar and select the menu option.
There is no detection available for whether the Taskbar is on or not. This means that no web page can be sure what height the screen is; the pixels reported by the “screen.Height” test always includes the Taskbar height.
The Taskbar is 26 pixeks high on a 1024*768 pixel display by default. The height can be changed by the user stretching it, but this does not need to be allowed for (no one else does, but it might be a good gimmick to do in the future).
When a web page is opened normally (e.g. default home page or with an href attribute), the Internet Explorer screen opens to fill the screen, with the Title bar, Menu bar, Location bar, the web page area, and the Status bar. For Windows XP with the Taskbar locked, the Taskbar will stay on screen, losing 24 pixels of the web page area, the other bars will be on-screen (including the Status bar).
To preserve the web page area, a bar would need to be turned off. If another web page needs to be opened, this is possible as a bar can be turned off in JavaScript. However, because there is no way of the code detecting the Taskbar without asking the user, a guess or a compromise has to be made. For Windows XP, the default installation has the Taskbar locked. For other Windows versions, the Taskbar disappears by default because “Auto-hide” is turned ON (ticked). It is not possible to detect the exact Windows version either, and users can always change the setting themselves, even while a web page is being displayed.
My compromise is to design the web page area for all home pages (those reached from search engines) fit within a height of 597 pixels (from Y=120 to Y=717). This allows for the default of Title bar, Menu bar, and Location bar, which total 120 pixels (Y=0 to Y=119) and the Status bar (23 pixels, from Y=718 to Y=740), and the Taskbar (26 pixels). If any of these are turned off, the web page is smaller than the screen, but the Status bar will remain at the bottom of the screen, whether the Taskbar is on or off.
My other method is to make subsequent web pages as large as possible, sometimes with the top bars being included for the user's familiarity. If I want to display a Status bar, it will be at the same place as the Taskbar would be, so that EITHER the Status bar or the Task bar is displayed, the Taskbar can cover over the Status bar, so no screen height is lost. Keeping the Status bar at this position means setting the screen (window) height to be 768.
Internet Explorer toolbars:
The only way to show a home page of a different size is to make the home page index.html automatically jump to another page (I call these index.htm). Within the index.html file, the new page's screen size, position and bars used can be forced. The names for these “morphed” web pages will normally be index.htm, these may auto-jump further into other pages labelled something like main.htm.
Although pages loaded from other webpages can be automatically closed without asking the user, the default home pages cannot be closed. If an index.html web page automatically jumps to an index.htm page, the index.html page will still be there, so a home page similar to the index.htm page will always be designed too. It is easiest to design this first knowing the screen height limitations, then design an extended or even a full-screen version after.
To summarise, this is my preferred sequence for designing a full website:
*.htm) to fit in a 1024 by 597-pixel area, make it auto-jump to "index.htm" and call it index.html.
index.html as a template, stretch the existing design to either a bigger screen (some bars) or a full-screen (no bars) page, and save it as index.htm.
index.htm (so the user is returned to the bigger web page), and save them as *.htm.
The disadvantage of this method is that the user is left with the first home page (index.html) open after they have closed the home page (index.htm). An example of this sequencing problem (using Yahoo) is:
Internet Explorer opens --->---user types/clicks--->--- Yahoo web page --->---user clicks--->--- index.html --->---automatic extra Internet Explorer opens--->--- index.htm
So now two Internet Explorer windows are open. The focus is on index.htm, which can open or be replaced by the other *.htm pages in the website. Behind it is index.html, which can do the same but is not necessary, and offers the user the chance to jump back to the Yahoo web page.
The better way is if the home page can open or replace other pages, and offers the user the chance to jump back, but to allow for bigger or full-size screens, two pages have to be used.
When designing a full-screen home page I include a link that will close that page, because there is no other Close box on-screen.