For a blog (or website in general) do you code for a fixed width? or Do you code for 90-100% fluid width? My blog looks ok @ 1280x1024 or under, but on widescreen it looks a little lost.
Ah, this topic again. In general I find fixed width layouts to be a complete and miserable /FAIL/ in web design. With the absurdly wide array of screen sizes and resolutions, designing to a fixed width ends up looking like rubbish on everything except the machine it was designed on. THOUGH, with some people being stuck at a third grade junior reader level when they get out of high school, they get their panties in a wad when the lines get 'too long' for them - likewise some sites don't have enough actual content to fill the screen. In these cases I will often use a semi-fluid layout. As you said if your blog looks good at 1280 and lower, but not higher than that, set a max-width on your design - that way it looks good at all lower resolutions, and does not get 'too wide' on bigger displays. Another approach is the so called 'mcSwitchy' which at first I didn't like because most examples were poorly implemented, but now I use it all the time since my own code for handling it runs much smoother/simpler. Create a javascript function you run at onload and onresize that swaps out the class on either the body or your topmost containing DIV (I use the latter) and simply inherit formatting off that. If you have a column that's taller than your content is at wider sizes, split it into two and ride it up... Switch from a banner ad at the top to a skyscraper at the side, etc, etc. Fill the extra screen space with stuff so the content area doesn't get 'too wide'.
Yet a whole bunch of the biggest websites in the world use fixed width... From my own purely design point of view, I go with a fixed width 99% of the time because you know exactly how it's going to look.
I like fluid sites however I have seen many that dont look good fluid. Any decent locations to read more on it?
I normally use fixed width of 770px and they work from 800x600 ->. Why i use this fixed width is because i usually use a container background image which streches vertically. Btw Deathshadow, i tried your Eight Corners Under One Roof tutorial, but i just couldn´t get it to work entirely. I had trouble with getting it to work fluid full screen, and also had trouble with the margins. It´s a great tut, i´ll get to it someday again and get it to work.
Remember, common doesn't make it right or even good. (see Windows, IE, and the 99% of pop music) ... or Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
I design in both, depends on the site, and my approach to it. Most designs are fixed, and most work fine on 1024x768 + (minimum resolution to design for really).