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Fixed Width vs Fluidity
04-14-2007, 06:20 PM
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 116 Location: Christchurch, Dorset     | Quote:
Both methods have their advantages, i've seen some 100% ones that look so devoid of use it would have been far nicer to compact it into a fixed width and give the impression of more content.
__________________ Stargate Forum! - Discuss SG-1, Atlantis and other great Sci-Fi shows!! DiscussDreams.com - Dream Discussion and Analysis Just a Face? - Post a picture and see who the world thinks you are!  | |||||
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04-14-2007, 07:55 PM
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 Title: Member
Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 109 Location: teh Ether  | Quote:
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Try again.  | ||||||
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04-14-2007, 08:17 PM
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 116 Location: Christchurch, Dorset | Well perhaps you can explain why some of the worlds most popular websites have fixed widths then? Such as the BBC site, blogger.com, flickr, facebook, all for example. Or for that matter Admin Fusion??? Can you honestly not see that sometimes the content is more suited to a fixed width? PS Mods might want to split our little tiff off to another thread
__________________ Stargate Forum! - Discuss SG-1, Atlantis and other great Sci-Fi shows!! DiscussDreams.com - Dream Discussion and Analysis Just a Face? - Post a picture and see who the world thinks you are! | ||||
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04-14-2007, 09:43 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 109 Location: teh Ether | Quote:
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Jim
__________________ Always a work in progress: www.TheFloorPro.com | |||||||
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04-14-2007, 10:07 PM
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 116 Location: Christchurch, Dorset | ok, lets take one at random, flickr, here's a link for the 1% of who have never heard of the site - http://www.flickr.com/ - now imagine that site bigger, 100%, 90%, 80% whatever on a 22inch screen, it will look awful, content spread here there and everywhere. At a fixed width it is nicely contained and far easier on the eyes.
__________________ Stargate Forum! - Discuss SG-1, Atlantis and other great Sci-Fi shows!! DiscussDreams.com - Dream Discussion and Analysis Just a Face? - Post a picture and see who the world thinks you are! | ||||
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04-14-2007, 11:02 PM
| #7 |
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 109 Location: teh Ether | Quote:
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Designing a fluid site does not mean you have to have the content spread across the full width of the page. That is what CSS is all about, in combination with good XHTML (Transitional or Strict) coding. There's really no reason that site couldn't also be adaptable to hand-held devices (PDAs, Cell Phones, etc.), but the design of that site wouldn't allow for that, let alone displaying properly on an antiquated 15 or 17" monitor in front of someone who has vision problems that require resolutions no greater than 800x600. When you try to increase the text size of that site for easier viewing by sight impaired visitors, you get broken tables. It also appears that flickr has a number of HTML validation errors as well as CSS problems. Fluid design isn't about making a web page take up all the available width of a viewport. It's about being flexible enough to expand and contract to take advantage of the technology the visitor uses. It's possible to accomplish that with good use of code and CSS, as well as a smattering of other technologies that help the website designer produce aesthetically appealing pages that honor the content they contain. Flickr.com fails at that. Jim
__________________ Always a work in progress: www.TheFloorPro.com | ||||||
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04-14-2007, 11:26 PM
| #8 |
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 116 Location: Christchurch, Dorset | Well I certainly agree about the accessibility of that site but that's a whole different discussion. Let's keep this simple, the question here being far more general and not on a specific site. I merely picked that as an example of one where a fluid width would ruin the current look. Another example then, without a site to distract; what about large amounts of content, it has been said that text at a fixed width in large quantities is far easier to read than it spread across a screen. This may be why so many forums remain like this.
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04-15-2007, 12:15 AM
| #9 |
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| Title: Member
Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 109 Location: teh Ether | Accessibility is not a whole 'nother discussion, it's why fluid design is better than fixed. The designer of a site has to take accessibility into account. Designing a site that only looks good at 800x600 resolution disregards everyone else on either side of the technology spectrum as well as those who need flexibility because of medical reasons. I realize one must sometimes make sacrifices that may make the design less appealing to a small minority of users, but we have the technology, if not yet the skills, to design sites that adapt to almost every circumstance. I agree that uninterrupted text across a wide expanse is more difficult to read. But there are even built-in allowances for that. Legacy postbit is one such feature available in vBulletin based forums, allowing the posting member's information to be displayed on the left side (or right, with hacks), which provides less over-all width for the post content. On forums that rely on images, graphics and code included in their posts, there is ample room for these on more fluid widths. Not that forums should allow images and graphics that are far too large, but tiny little thumbnails aren't appealing either. Neither is scrolling back and forth to read a small code block. On some forums, customized BBCode has been introduced to allow for floating content to the left or right of images/graphics. It helps to break up those expanses of text and also helps to format post content in a more attractive manner. I use it on my flooring forum, although very few of the members use it. However, it helps me to create more appealing content slices that appear on the home page/portal, as well as throughout the articles and blog system we use. There are other methods too, that will help to break up the content blocks. Smilies are very popular. And most members who post, usually post much shorter messages than someone as verbose as I am (not that being verbose is necessarily a good thing, as you no doubt have noticed  ). Another very effective use for space is the ad block. AdminFusion uses this on their home and main forum pages, although they reduce the width of the other content to do it. They could use a fixed width ad block and fluid width content and set the whole thing in a wrapper that keeps it all at about 85% viewport width that makes for an attractive and very useful page. The ad blocks could be used to monetize the site, or just to display the affiliates and supporters links. The blocks could be different on any page.As you can see, the text expanse excuse is not a viable reason to restrict a site to a fixed width design. There are just too many options to alleviate or even eliminate that issue. Jim | ||||
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04-15-2007, 01:37 AM
| #10 |
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Title: Gas 1.43
Join Date: Feb 2006 Posts: 3,984 Location: back in TX  
| There will always be strong schools of thought on both sides of this issue. But there are also compromises. A long time ago, a small percentage of users had higher resolutions than 800x600. So a fixed width at 800x600 was a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of people. As the years have progressed, and higher dpi monitors became cheaper, the percentage of users with max res at 800 dwindled and the wide margins of wasted real estate was an inconvenience to a large percentage. I don't know the facts & figures, but I dare say that only 1% of users (choose or have no other option but to) use 800x600. So now, a horizontal scroll bar should be a major inconvenience to a small percentage. Now, Front page designs are great. Less is More really works there. But if you actually peruse the sites, the widths are not so narrow banded. (except AF... but that's another thread) I firmly believe that the new minimum resolution to cater is 1024x768. The best way to have both worlds is to have min-width:990px with a fluidic max-width:1280px (if this could be done).
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