fluid design - why?

you know i spend a lot of time trying to find the simplest 3 column fluid design. then i stopped today and asked myself, why? so when a person minimizes their screen everything get jumbled and jumps out the the nice division i spent all afternoon styling. so why do people want fluid design?

 

Limited fluid design can work well. Designing it for a minimum of 768 width and scaling larger would work well. This way even the smallest res. can see it

 

I don't like fluid design. I always design my htmls with width 780px and length as per the content that index page holds.

 

Okay - this is feedback from a user. This is just me, but I loath whitespace. I didn't spend $$$ for a sweet 21 inch monitor to only have part of it used.

And yes, I still have the mind-numbing default WP theme on my blog, but in the process of getting a new theme created - and its going to be fluid.

 

i love fluidspace....have a max of 900 to 960px is good

 

yeah but what about when everything starts to jumble on top of each other. you can design sites the fill the page that aren't fluid. u just get the nice horizontal scroll bar.

 

I like my entire screen filled, I get tired of looking at websites designed for 800px screens... it's 2006! At least start designing for 1024 x 768... I mean cmon who uses 13" monitors these days!

 

then you aren't a very good designer........design for 760px then work from there

 

I can only guess that you're not exactly what you'd call a power user. I don't have any 21" monitors, but if I did, I sure wouldn't waste all the wonderful space with a single application sprawled across it. I'd have two or three browsers open at 800×600px, a mail client at about the same and an editor, Emacs, at 600px wide by most of the available height. That would still leave room around the perimeter for start-up icons. In fact, that describes the setup I have now at 1280×960, and it's a bit crowded. I'd love to have that extra 4" for open space.

Of course the Linux boxes don't require the huge monitors since I can set my desktop at 1920×1440, the screen at 1024×768 and scroll the desktop itself; in fact scroll around four separate virtual desktops. Thank god for Linux and X-Window.

Don't waste all that expensive screen area by maximising your applications.

cheers,

gary

 

Gary,

Actually, I run my 5 linux boxes through a KVM - so I don't need to have multiple applications open on the screen. I have one box for each application - be it compiling, database work, email, etc. So, I guess you are right - I am not exactly a power user...

 

Fluid rocks cos your making the most of the space no matter the res.

If your having problems with things getting jumbled up your not designing it correctly then.

There is such a thing as min-width and max-width.

 

which doesn't work in internet explorer

 

Well yeah but aslong as you do as you said and design it to work at 760px then you should have no problems as there is no need for it to be any smaller than 760px. Like I have in my personal site/blog that is in my sig.

But yeah good point I suppose.

 

so i find all these fluid 3 column designs. one pulls the right column over the middle and left, one meets in the middle, all are ugly. which 3 column fluid is most commonly used.

 

then you're using crappy layouts

google "holy grail three column layout"

 

Holy Grail.

Some other CSS layouts.

 

guys, I even knew a website that had 3 versions, in order to please the user, when you first entered it redirected you to a folder 800x600 or 1024x768, depending on your screen resultion, its kinda stupid, I know,

But I design for 800x600 and then stratch it from the middle or the side, depending where I need to place the content

 

Thats just crazy, how much extra work?

When you can get just as good an effect by designing your site with carful thought and fluid design.

 

No, I'd call you a gadgeteer. A power user will will likely be using various applications side by side, pulling data from one to enter into the other, or collaborating with a net-mate on some common document while having a com app, the doc in question and perhaps a reference document all open and visible at the same time. I can only imagine the hoops you'd have to jump through trying to do everything in different machines and switching back and forth.

So, no, you're not a power user or you wouldn't be wasting all that screen real estate on a single application at a time.

gary

 

I was an advocate of fluid designs for a long time.

HTML/CSS, as currently designed, makes fluid designs more grief than they are worth.