Fluid vs Fixed Width

[chicgeek]

Originally Posted by DaveyBoy

FLUID STILL SUCKS!

That's all that matters.

[Buccaneer]

I like the fixed look.

[Jesse Vlasveld]

Originally Posted by DaveyBoy

FLUID STILL SUCKS!

Strong arguments :p

I voted fixed. Mainly because I want my design to be viewed by the user the same as it is designed to be.

[John Scott]

http://www.wolf-howl.com/random-thou...4-resolutions/

Comments seem to be in favor of fluid, no?

[chicgeek]

My thread got a linky. How fun. And they quoted one of my typos. Also fun.

Ultimately it's your audience that matters most, not another blog's take on it and ensuing comments.

[atox]

Prefer fixed, both for browsing and coding.

[chicgeek]

Just a note that V7N has gone fluid:
http://www.v7n.com/

[Jesse Vlasveld]

I think it looks way better like this. And I even said I preferred Fixed! (Damn professionals make everything look good)

[chicgeek]

I did the structure coding, and I still prefer fixed.

(Yes, I know I used tables... shush)

[Aztral]

Fluid baby! Totally resizable web pages based on browser size. Like my home page. Works in IE6/7, FF, NS. could care less about the other 2% of the browsers

[noob78]

Fluid design all the way! well, as much as possible.

[noob78]

I think we all know that it's really IE6/7 giving the most problem w/ fluid design. But, there's always a work around.

[Cornbread]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Which do you prefer?

As far as reading/viewing I personally like the fluid layout because I have a huge 22" wide screen monitor and I like to use all of the real estate. Designing, I had a lot of trouble with fluid, I couldn't get it to look good in all resolutions, 1024 by 768 it looked fine but 800 by 600 it was all scrunched, so I had to change it to fixed.

[paranoidandroid]

I prefer fixed width, it gives you more control over the design and you don't end up with long lines of text (which can be harder to read). A good compromise is to make the header and sometimes the footer expand but keep the content fixed.

With the ever increasing monitor sizes I think it's beginning to be acceptable to design for 1024x768 rather than 800x600. I have a 24" screen but I never have the browser window wider than around 1000px it doesn't bother me that I might have a bit of extra space either side, I can have other windows opened at the same time.

I don't get the whole 'having to use all available screen width' it makes no sense - try opening up amazon wider than 1200 - instead of redundant space to the left and right you get it between products, in the header and below the left and right navigation which looks much worse - not gained anything.

[Taltos]

Wow, this thread is still goin' a bit. I still prefer the fluid. paranoidandroid has some good points but I contend they argue in favor of a fluid layout.

Long lines of text are more difficult to read but most people are still running at around 1024 X 768 so if you make sure your fluid layout doesn't end up with really long lines of text at that and maybe one res step up from that then you are golden.

The Amazon example doesn't mean fluid is bad just that the designers for that site may not have done as good a job as they should have. However, my question there is how many people that run in a resolution wider that 1200 pixels open their browser in full screen or in a very wide window. I like the fluid layouts because I can stretch my browser window to a width that makes for comfortable reading based on the line length.

I also think that a really good fluid layout is one of the biggest and most rewarding challenges in site design right now. It is more difficult and takes some creative solutions to do well. As designer, and I do include myself in this statement, I think we generally like too much control over the final layout. That makes it more difficult to come up with layouts that provide the "look and feel" we want as the end result and still works in a fluid design. I know my better fluid designs have locked the main div at 1024 or 1200 max width. It is cheating a little but I still have more to learn and develop on doing the fluid layouts. I do love the challenge though.

[LazyJim]

It's probably the most complex issue I've had with web page graphic design and coding!

I agree fixed width does not make best use of the medium, but fluid and other alternatives, as well as taking a bit more thought as to exactly how to utilise the flexibility offered by computers, are hard to implement effectively until standards-based web page presentation technology matures.

That won't stop me trying though, and even the simplest fluid layouts offer the advantage of user choice (of widths), only compromising the layout at extremes of narrow/wide window widths. (I add min- and max-width in my CSS for browsers that support it).

Using fixed width also means that users exercising their choice of text size, may break your layout anyway. So by clamping down on the layout with a fixed width you may be doing more damage.
(especially now there's a greater chance your audience needs larger text-sizes (using higher screen resolutions) and more people know how e.g. Firefox has extensions exposing the text-size commands to people that hadn't already found it.)

It's power to the people! - attempting to fix a layout in pixel sizes, I think, is ultimately doomed other than in PDF's and on paper.

[woosterbert]

I don't think there are enough wide screens in use out there yet to really worry about it yet so I go for fixed.

[TCM-webmaster]

FOr those of you that use fixed layout, do you design your fixed layout to 800 X 600 screen resolutions, or another resolution.

I tend to like the fixed width layout, but with the higher resolution screens, and with fewer and fewer using the 800 X 600 resolution, there does seem to be a lot of wasted space....?!?!?

[chicgeek]

This came up semi-recently in another thread.

I think the vast majority of fixed width designers have upped their design standards and are no designing for wider screen.

My designs are 900px wide, though I know others who design for 950px wide.

Hope that helps.

[kristeejo]

wow - i dont design that wide.

Mine average between 750 px and 800 px.

What is the true percentage of those using 800x600 resolution?