Now that Microsoft is going to come out with its own Windows 8/RT tablet, Surface, the company likely expects for its owners to do a lot of browsing on the web with the Internet Explorer 10 client. In a new post on the Internet Explorer blog, Microsoft talks about how website designers should allow for different window sizes for sites viewed on IE 10 in Windows 8.
The blog states that most websites have a priority to render their pages in a 1024 resolution. Those sites may not be optimized to run on different resolutions, such as tablets running in portrait mode. Microsoft states, "This narrow layout is particularly important in Windows 8, where the snapped view of the Metro style browser is in this exact state. This situation also occurs for portrait mode on slate devices due to the smaller form factor."
The Metro IE 10 browser is setup so that websites can be see in portrait mode and snapped views in the 1024 resolution such as the Wikipedia page above. Website designers can also alter their sites to show content in portrait mode at smaller resolutions such as 320 or 768.
Microsoft offers up some sample code that designers can use to have their sites display well on IE 10 in these smaller resolutions. The blog post adds, "We recommend testing your site in layout widths of 768 pixels (portrait on most slates) and 320 pixels (snapped Metro style browser) in addition to 1024 pixels and wider (landscape)."
Source: Internet Explorer blog | Image via Microsoft