Fluid or Fixed Width Web Designs?

Posted by Karen - May 19th, 2006

There are defintiely pros and cons for either. I tend to design both styles depending on the needs of my client.

Fixed-width designs tend to give the designer a little more control of the layout. The trouble is some designers are creating fixed widths for 1024 x 768 resolution, completely forgetting that a good percentage of people, like myself, have their monitors set to 800 x 600. I have it set that way because frankly, it’s easier on my eyes.
I wear specially tinted and magified glasses for the computer as it is. I don’t need more eyestrain! So when a designer creates a fixed width design, it should still accomodate those users with 800 x 600 resolution.

Fluid designs are great because they are more accessible to users with various other devices. The design stretches across the screen in higher resolutions and with just a couple of CSS tweaks, you can make the content stop stretching beyond a certain width.

I can’t wait until all browsers conform to the current web standards. Then CSS tags like max-width might actually work the way they’re supposed to. And then maybe more designers would create fluid designs more often.

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Posted in Web Design

4 Responses to “Fluid or Fixed Width Web Designs?”

  1. Frits Andriessen Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 4:03 am

    I wonder if all browsers will ever comply to the current web standards. IE is known for not doing so, but there is a reason for that. IE tries to make something readable from badly written html pages.

    But if xhtml is supposed to be a strict standard I wouldn’t mind if Microsoft interpretates it as such. IE emphasizes on servicing the readers instead of “punishing” badly written html.
    So that could mean that poor html writers should not migrate to xhtml.

    I’m glad with xhtml because it frees you from tables in your design and with the validator http://validator.w3.org/ you can easily check your code before uploading it.

    Frits

  2. Karen Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 1:04 pm

    long live tableless designs!

    Thanks for stopping by again, Frits…I see it’s becoming a habit ;)

    I love having your input as always.

  3. Frits Andriessen Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 3:02 pm

    It’s a great pleasure visiting your website, Karen. :-)

  4. Karen Says:
    May 19th, 2006 at 10:18 pm

    thanks, Frits :-)