[thelist] DEBATE: Fixed Width Vs Liquid

Arlen.P.Walker at jci.com Arlen.P.Walker at jci.com
Tue Jun 4 13:14:02 CDT 2002


>Their exact words were "an alphabet and a half" which, by my count, is 36.
>That seems way low to me.

Don't know what alphabet *you're* using, but with English, that's 39. ;{>}
But let's not get too wedded to that, because what they're talking about is
not number of letters but the amount of pixels/points/whatever that equates
to about 1.5 times the length of the alphabet when printed. Go pick up a
newspaper or a book and check it out.

That's not *just* an opinion, BTW. It's got a lot of scientifically
gathered data behind it and a lot of book design experience. But that in
itself is the rub. The Web is *not* paper; some new rules may apply, and
not all of them are discovered, yet. (Some old ones may carry over, as
well, and which ones these may be are also not discovered yet. Uncertainty
is the price we pay for standing on the edge of a New Frontier.)

I've handled this in many different ways. The method I was most comfortable
with using was the "max-width:" attribute from CSS2 to set an outside limit
on the growth of the article, and let it shrink liquidly. I chose a little
under 60em as the maximum, allowing it to grow well beyond my comfort
limits. By using a wider column than the center of the bell curve, I
managed to include most of my readers comfort zones. I used some sidebar
material on either edge to help pad out the view, so it didn't look too
badly. There's nothing magic about the 60; it's just a number which was
substantially larger than the tested "optimal" number; go ahead and try a
larger one if you like.

I don't like fixed-width layouts because I don't browse in full-screen
mode. My actual browser window width is about 650 or so pixels wide (never
actually measured it, just resized it until I felt comfortable with it) so
a 750p-pixel wide layout would annoy me greatly, if there were something in
both the extreme right and left areas worth reading. Luckily, most sites
use one of those two edges for advertising, so I don't miss anything by not
expanding the window.

Personally, when it's so easy to build layouts that can expand and contract
over a few hundred pixels, I don't understand anyone wanting to build one
with a fixed layout, but that's just me, YMMV. I like designs which are
nearly perfect at 800 pixels or so, but can squeeze down to under 600 and
expand out to over 1000 without significant degradation.

Have fun,
Arlen
Chief Managing Director In Charge, Department of Redundancy Department
DNRC 224

Arlen.P.Walker at JCI.Com
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