[thelist] Liquidity

[Janet]

Aard,

This topic has really taken my interest today.  I found, by chance, an
article about this topic on the evolt site. Go figure!  There were links to
several sites ice/jello/liquid.  I don't care for the ice sites since I view
at 800 x 600 on a 19 inch.  There are workarounds for creating a good liquid
site, but it requires much forethought.  I know that some sites will fill up
the window, designing for 800 x 600, but only place non-intregal content in
the right border.  Therefore, these sights are *really* designing for the
small rez monitors.  This design method begs the issue. I've decided that
I'm going to learn the tricks for developing a liquid site.

Oh, and regarding the question whether I think discover.com achieves a
mix...well, no, I don't.

Thanks to all for the input!

Best regards,
Janet



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Janet
[snip]
> commmercial sites are ice/static sites.  I just
> hate that big wide strip
> that I have to look at along the side of my 19
> inch monitor!   Is it really
> that hard to plan and execute a liquid site?  Or,
> is it just easier to do a static site?

well, that depends on how you approach it...

too many people come from the print world or other design industry where
designs are
absolute... you know the factors (dot gain, colors, etc.) up-front... these
are the same people
who use .gif text all over their sites...

people with that mindset tend to go for the strict static site... build a
design pixel by pixel,
everything has to align or it falls apart, etc... very much wanting to
retain control of the design...

these are also the same people who tend to want to design to certain
resolution, color depth,
and browser... they want absolute control, and limiting the delivery medium
offers some more
control... a lot of them do Flash work, too...

then there are people who don't care as much about the design, and are more
concerned with
getting the information out there... they assume the user will resize the
window to a
comfortable size... they let things float all over the place, making
consistency diffucult to
achieve... sometimes text is bizarre, and image wraps do weird things to the
page...

the trick is merging the two...

i've seen a lot of people build gorgeous sites that fall apart if they try
to expand them... and i've
seen some fugly liquid sites...

but for the most part, with WYSIWYG-happy developers, and
designers-as-web-guys image
slicing their way onto the scene, you won't see an easy mix of the two...

so if you don't have people willing to get into the guts of the code, and
designers who build it to
expand, as many places don't, then you see these fixed sizes...

so, do you think discovery.com has that mix?