[thelist] Liquidity

[aardvark]

> -----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?