Choosing a layout method is often very personal. One person might prefer absolute positioning while another only uses floats with relative sized blocks. An
elastic layout is often considered the most flexible, because it sets a specific size for major text blocks while leaving the rest of the layout to stretch to fit the available space. But
fixed width layouts give the designer more control over how the page will look. And others prefer a completely
liquid layout because the page stays consistent no matter how big or small the browser is. And of course, some people still prefer
tables for layout despite the
many reasons to use CSS instead. What layout style is your preference?
A fixed width designed for an 800px monitor resolution looks ridiculously narrow on a 1600px monitor. Even a 980px page looks pretty narrow, and the trend is always to higher resolutions.
I design a fixed width for a minimum 1024px width resolution, which right now represents nearly half the surfers out there. Most of the rest are at higher resolutions, with a very few still at 800px. I’ll usually go with 980px to show a little background color.
If I’m presenting a lot of text content I’ll use mostly white space on the page. With a fixed width you can throw in a splash of color in the background without detracting from the content, or causing eyestrain. There are too many eyestrain-inducing pages out there, IMO, with light text against a colored background, or teeny-tiny text. Yecch.
For three columns I find a liquid layout works best at all but the narrowest resolutions, which I don’t concern myself with anymore in view of the monitor stats I see.
My main concern is making a web page visitor-friendly, rather than looking cool. There can be a huge difference between the two.
I love the exact positioning available with fixed width CSS but recently spent hours trying to render a page to suit several browsers and operating systems.
It worked great in IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera on Windows 7; and Safari on Mac; but IE on Vista was a disaster; and on XP half the page was illegible.
I put the whole thing into a table which worked for all instances. I was disappointed at having to use that solution but I had a deadline and my client uses XP.
Now I just have to figure out how they do it at CSS Zen Garden…