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Current Web Style  (View post)

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, February 9, 2006
18 years ago

Of the twelve designs presented, only one (mozilla.org) has a fluid layout that fits the users browser.

The other eleven have rigid layouts – they fit the designer's browser and may or may not suit the user.

Mike Rundle (9rules) [PersonRank 0]

18 years ago #

Haha, yeah they caught us in an awkward little UI stage ;)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Roger, fluid design vs non-fluid design is a tough issue. I see pros and cons for both approaches. I came from the "everything must be fluid" school, but these days think "not necessarily" and appreciate such things as "perfect suggested line length (knowing that it can't and shouldn't be enforced)". There are extreme examples with both approaches which I find hurt usability – e.g., a tiny tiny fixed site is not so good, neither is a full-page line length page like UseIt.com IMO – but there are also well-done sites in both styles. Usually, I'd say for multi-layout, multi-items, portal-style pages, or plain tools, full-screen is mostly better. When it comes to plain "text", I don't think so. There are many issues with the old argument of "let the user decide...". Some settings are not only hard to decide on for every user, they are also annoying to toggle from page to page and site to site.

Roger Browne [PersonRank 10]

18 years ago #

Philipp, it's the same amount of work for the user to scroll horizonally as to resize the browser window, but the resizing usually has to be done only once per site. So it really is about "let the user decide".

I run at 1600x1200 resolution, which lets me have two browser windows open side-by-side – except for non-fluid sites that want more than 800 pixels width.

Anyway, I appreciate that this is not the place to carp on about web design, so I'll hold my tongue. Google Blogoscoped is a really attractive website, and all I miss due to its non-fluid layout is the advertising column on the right :-)

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