I had always been from the 'school' of always make your web page automatically adjust to 100% screen width, independant of monitor resolution or favorites on or off. From a earlier post I made and some very good feedback, I can now see the advantages of fixing page width. Seems Yahoo has theirs to fit screen when favorites are off and MSN sets theirs up to fit screen with favorites on. Here is my own 100% http://www.virtualengine2000.com/indexBackup2.htm And then fixed at 800 pix http://www.virtualengine2000.com/index.htm For the first time ever, I can see the advantages of fixed widths. Am I just a late bloomer or is their a rule of thumb?
There is no rule of thumb. Some people prefer fluid layouts, other prefer fixed. Just depends on your preference.
No rules of thumbs.. since it depends on a whole lot of things. 1) Customer preference. No explanation needed here. Customer is King 2) Content You don't want to make a news site with liquid layout so when someone with a huge monitor they have to scroll sideways to read your content. Or have you teasers look like they're one liners. But at the same time you don't want to have you website look like they are pocky in an empty box or have too much empty space in the either sides. (FYI: pocky is a long thin biscuits covered with chocolates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky) 3) Statistics. What are your viewers avarage screen resolutions Personally I would go for elastics layout all width are in EM. Hail CSS! ^___________^
I hate seeing all that white space (or background color) just go to waste. I guess that depends on your screen/window size but.....100% width sites can be a little tricky to code but I think it is worth it (depending on the site).
100% widths pose a growing challenge with the introduction of widescreen monitors as your text that looks fine on a normal resolution standard aspect ratio screen becomes a single long line on a high res widescreen. This poses both asthetic issues and also psychologists recommend a maximum words per line before readability starts to suffer as whilst punctuation/ spacing may still be correct it "looks like" a single sentance rather than a paragraph and therefore is initially read as such.