January 22, 2007

You Say You Want a Resolution

The topic of screen resolution in web design has once again reared its ugly and multifaceted head. Jeremy Keith and Roger Johansson still say “nay.” Well, I’m saying “yay,” with some conditions. I know many people take a hard-lined approach to this, saying that fixed-width 1024px sites are wrong most, if not all, of the time. This post is not meant to once again pose the tired questions of “What base resolution should we aim for?” or “Can we all start designing for 1024px?,” instead I want to throw an opinion for wider sites into the mix. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for a 1024px web from now on, just that 1024px can be right under certain conditions. (For the sake of brevity and clarity, I’ll refer to these sites respectively as 800px and 1024px though I realize that the “live” area is less.)

The Problem With Images

After Jeremy wrote the post above, I got into it a bit with him over IM—because I like to play devil’s advocate, and I know we don’t see entirely eye-to-eye on this one. I told him the biggest, and potentially only, reason I consider 1024px sites a viable option comes down to images. Some sites need to display larger images in a field of content, which when ganged up with a side column of content or navigation, can create the potential need for more than 800px of horizontal real estate. You may point out that there are ways to drop that side column further down the page for smaller screens. You are right, but just as 800px wide sites aren’t always the right solution, neither is moving content and navigation below the scroll. Clients hate that one. Just because something is still present on a page, the fact that it’s dropped towards the bottom does little to cushion the blow.

Resizing and cropping images are options, but in my opinion, these are rarely usable solutions for most sites, especially sites where you have little or no control over content creation (as is the case with much client work) or where you inherit a wealth of legacy content. Sometimes cropped images lose context, as when they are editorial in nature or contain text that’s meant to serve as content. Resizing or cropping images that are dependent on being at their full size could prove to be unacceptable.

Design as a Compromise

I must be one of the rarer breeds that doesn’t gang up multiple applications on-screen, instead favoring the use of the majority of my screen for my current task. I browse almost full-screen and just switch between apps (which are also usually full-screen) as needed. I mention this not to suggest that I design for myself, but to illustrate that screen resolution does not equate to window width. Just because someone has their monitor set to a 1024px resolution does not mean that we can guarantee they have a browser window open that wide. Of course, the same goes for a monitor resolution of 800px wide. Merely setting out to design a site with any width boundaries opens us up to consolations.

At this time, I am working on designs for at least five websites. Of them, two are 1024px fixed-width designs, and in both of those cases the decision came down to image display. Kongregate, a recent alpha-release site I worked on, came in under the condition that it be a 1024px wide site due to the game pages needing to take advantage of more real estate to display a large variety of game widths. In the last redesign for A List Apart, we ended up going with a 1024px wide site to deal with the mountains of legacy articles that contained imagery of all shapes and sizes (tailored for whatever version of ALA they were published during).

In cases of a brand new site, or where I can help dictate styles and plan how content gets created, I will almost always push for 800px wide friendly sites. Recent sites I’ve worked on like Amigo and the Dictionary.com redesign both work nicely for 800px resolutions; Amigo because it was a new site and we could set the tone from the start, and Dictionary.com because the site’s content is almost solely text. It’s becoming easier for many people to think of sites from a blog-skewed angle; that being mostly text-heavy and thoroughly layout independent. Unfortunately, I don’t work on many blog designs. I tend to work on sites that are more promotional or editorial in nature. These are also two ends of web design I find lean towards traditional (print) design and its particular presentational problems. Meaning, public and client expectations are sometimes placed on display first and function second. With that said, I try to come at a design problem with both issues firmly in mind, and at the very least, come to a comfortable middle-ground, or preferably, find an execution that satisfies both. I don’t even want to get in to the fact that banner ad sizes keep getting bigger and intruding on more of our content. Ugh.

The “Right” and “Wrong” of It

I don’t think any of us are wrong, we all just make the particular compromises that make the most sense to us. Sometimes, it comes down to budget. Dealing with these resolution foibles can most certainly add time and money to a job. Because of this, it can often be one of the first compromises to make on a job that pays less. But, is content on the web even ready for 1024px wide browsing? Do many people browse at less than 1024px wide because the majority of web content doesn’t ask that they browse any wider? Could be. 1024px is certainly not too wide for sensible and legible design. I can remember the struggle of designing an 800px wide site when there were still people out there with 640px wide desktop resolution. And here we are now with 800px being the de-facto base width. I imagine we are just in the growing pains of 1024px coming into its own. All I’m saying is that it’s simply just not always possible. While I strive for working at 800px, and potentially making a site flow to wider resolutions, I must hold fast that 1024px fixed-width sites are a realistic option for me when designing.

Commentary (43):

1. Dan Boland says… jan 22, 2007 | 11:34 am

Two points:

1) One of the main reasons I generally stick with 800px designs is it means a lot less work involved in developing a print stylesheet.

2) Your audience should help determine design width. For instance, a site for a library should be 800px to be as inclusive as possible, but a site like ALA can safely be 1024px.

2. Jeff Croft says… jan 22, 2007 | 11:40 am

Really good post, Jason. I just want to respond to this one line:

Do many people browse at less than 1024px wide because the majority of web content doesn’t ask that they browse any wider?

Just about every major news site (CNN, NYT, ESPN, Time Magazine, Washington Post, Fox News, etc, etc.) has gone to ~1024px wide. I don’t know that it’s accurate to say “the majority of web content doesn’t ask that they browse any wider” anymore. I may be biased since I work in the news media industry, but I usually take news sites as a good measure on these sorts of things, because they are so general-interest. Everyone reads the news, at least sometimes. Therefore, I figure if it’s okay for the readers of CNN, ESPN, and The New York Times, it’s probably okay for my readers, too.

That having been said, I definitely agree with you that this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis, as not all sites are created equal.

Somewhat relatedly, it’s a real pet peeve of mine when people try to say that sites which require horizontal scrolling has an accessibility issue. They don’t. Period.

3. Keith says… jan 22, 2007 | 11:41 am

You make some really good points here Jason. I woud say that in theory fluid designs are the way to go, but when you throw in fixed elements (images, ads, etc.) a somewhat tricky situation becomes even trickier.

Sometimes because of client expectation, budget, audience, content, etc. you’ve got to make a compromise. The really is no hard right or wrong when it comes to this issue.

4. Scott says… jan 22, 2007 | 11:41 am

Dan makes a good point. As much as designers often go with what seems right at the time - decisions should be based on the audience for the site. The problem with that being that it’s often hard to get good stats in order to make reliable decisions. I think if flexible “elastic” width sites were a bit easier to assemble (mostly due to inconsistencies in browser rendering), I know I’d push in that direction a lot more.

Maybe once the time comes when we can all forget about IE5.5 and 6…

5. Jason Santa Maria says… jan 22, 2007 | 11:47 am

Dan and Scott: I agree on looking at user stats, but because these can be misleading (due to resolution not always equalling window-width), it’s not a solid measurement of where you should go. Elastic sites, can be a good alternative, but like I said in my post, the biggest hitch I run into is dealing with images. Sometimes, cropping and resizing aren’t desirable options. In cases where you can be in charge of content-creation or guidelines, you can set out from the start with image restrictions that accommodate a fluid or elastic layout. Otherwise, you are left with little other option than a fixed-width site, and sometimes, a 1024px fixed-width site.

Jeff Croft: I agree about newspapers starting to set a tone, it’s where much of the reading online gets done. I really do think we are headed towards a pretty standard 1024px wide web. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s a “resistance is futile” situation, but it’s seems inevitable. The good side to that is the problems I have will naturally solve themselves eventually… until the rise 1280px wide sites becomes an issue :D

6. Scott says… jan 22, 2007 | 11:54 am

You’re right on the money - images are probably the biggest factor in making elastic sites tough to develop. And you’re also correct in saying that stats can be misleading - I guess it depends on whether window width is being tracked along with screen resolution.

1024 does seem, for a lot of cases, to be the norm now given that large screen LCD monitors have come down so much in price. But there’s still plenty of people out there running 800x600 unfortunately. I think those same people are running IE5 too ;-) They just don’t want to make our lives any easier…

7. Jim Greer says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:00 pm

I think the decision for our site (Kongregate), was uncontroversial, and we definitely have not had any problems with the fixed width design. We’ve gotten uniformly glowing reviews about our site design (though of course everyone has their pet feature requests).

8. Jason Santa Maria says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:04 pm

Jim Greer: Luckily, in the case of Kongregate, we’re dealing with a community of gamers. It seems like many of them have the drool-worthy super tricked out systems already.

9. Jeff Croft says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:09 pm
… until the rise 1280px wide sites becomes an issue.

Resolution independence will be here before that happens. :)

10. Jason Santa Maria says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:13 pm
Resolution independence will be here before that happens. :)

Jason laughs as he browses the web from his flying car while wearing his new porno-goggles.

11. Kim Siever says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:20 pm

“Just because someone has their monitor set to a 1024px resolution does not mean that we can guarantee they have a browser window open that wide. Of course, the same goes for a monitor resolution of 800px wide.”

The difference of course is that as resolution increases, so does the ability to have more applications open at once. It is less feasible to have multiple applications open simultaneously on an 800px screen than on a 1024px screen.

12. Brian Warren says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:27 pm

Great points Jason. I wonder what things will be like a few years from now when we’re thinking 1280. Maybe the browser landscape will be a bit more highly evolved and not so depndent on screen size. Well, a guy can hope anyway.

13. Jeff Croft says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:48 pm

Perhaps this would be the most accurate thing to say:

As screen resolution increases, so too does the level of ambiguity in the size of the viewport.

In other words, it’s a fairly safe assumption that people with lower-resolution screens are viewing maximized, and thus it’s fairly easy for us web designers to guess what their viewport size is. As screen resolution increases, some people continue to browse maximized, some fit two apps on the screen at the same time, some fit three apps on the screen at the same time, and so on.

It’s even reasonable to expect that some people, when they move from 800x600 to 1280x1024 will actually decrease the size of their browser window (because they ran maximized at 800px but now are running three browser windows on their 1280px screen).

Bottom line? Going forward, we’re going to be less able to pick a target resolution that works for a very large percentage (95% plus) of our audience.

To deal with this, we have a two basic options:

1. Go with liquid layouts, or other technologies that scale to fit the browser window (read: Flash).
2. Just let users deal with it. Their browser have scrollbars and resizing widgets — they can use them!

Seriously, at some point we have to put this on the users. If someone decides to browse with 700px wide windows, then they are making the decision to scroll horizontally. Fine. If someone decides to browse maximized, then they are making the decision to see very long line lengths on some sites. Fine. In both cases, the content is perfectly accessible and usable.

14. Jeremy Keith says… jan 22, 2007 | 12:49 pm

Stan, Stan, Stan… you make me sound like a curmudgeonly old troll… when I fact, I like to think of myself as a curmudgeonly young troll.

Actually, I agree with you about images. When image width dictates the minimum size, there’s not much you can do about it.

But…

Far too often, I see designers reach for a fixed width even when images aren’t dictating the constraints. Ideally, we should all be making informed decisions based on many, many factors like audience demographic, image requirements, etc.

All too often, I see designers reach for a fixed-width solution first without even considering a fluid approach. On the one hand, I can’t blame them because, let’s face it, fixed with layouts are a walk in the park compared with the challenges of doing a good liquid layout. On the other hand, I really wish that more designers approached each situation anew… as you have clearly done: fixed width for ALA (for the reasons you mentioned), fluid width here.

In theory, everyone agrees with the maxim that “there is no wrong or right solution: decide on a case-by-case basis”. In practice, I’ve observed a bias for a fixed-width layout, chosen with flimsy justifications.

The constraints of image sizes within content areas isn’t a flimsy justification: it’s a perfectly good reason to go fixed (or to at least have a wide min-width).

15. Anthoy Watts says… jan 22, 2007 | 1:04 pm

Wider screens don’t make better web sites. You ever try to read a line of text that spans 1024 pixels? Design must serve content, not technology.

16. Jason Santa Maria says… jan 22, 2007 | 1:07 pm

Jeremy: Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you sound like a curmudgeonly troll, old or young!

I just needed to write this to make sure you guys wouldn’t think of me as an uncaring designer that merely reaches for fixed-width all the time ;D

Anthony Watts: Line lenths like that are just plain poor design, regardless of screen/window size. 1024px is a perfectly reasonable size for designing legible and beautiful websites. That task lies with the designer, not technology.

17. Jim Greer says… jan 22, 2007 | 1:21 pm

Yes, Jason, 96% of Kongregate visits are 1024 or above. And 38% are cooled with liquid nitrogen!

18. Anthony Watts says… jan 22, 2007 | 1:25 pm

Agreed - my point is that just because you have the space, it doesn’t mean you have to fill it. I think a lot of people fall into that trap.

19. Keith says… jan 22, 2007 | 2:06 pm

Jeremy makes a good point that raises a larger issue:

Far too often, I see designers reach for a fixed width even when images aren’t dictating the constraints. Ideally, we should all be making informed decisions based on many, many factors like audience demographic, image requirements, etc.

This goes way beyond the topic of screen resolution. I feel that many, many designers spend too much time thinking about tool and technique and not enough thinking about the best solution to a particular problem. Every design decision we make should be informed.

20. Wilson Miner says… jan 22, 2007 | 2:37 pm

I would make fun of Jeff for using the word “viewport” to describe the browser window, except I notice recently that I do it all the time.

21. Christian Watson says… jan 22, 2007 | 2:48 pm

Jeff raises an important point (#13) that higher screen resolutions does not equate to wider viewports.

My (sweet) 24” Dell monitor is set to 1600x1200 (or something like that), but I tend to have my browser at or around 1024px wide. In addition I tend to change the size of my browser window depending on what I am doing and what else I need to see on the screen.

As more people get larger monitors and start using higher resolutions (say 1152x864 becomes the norm in the future) I’m not sure that they’ll all be browsing with their browser windows maximized.

Thus, how much will things actually change from how they are now?

22. Dan Bowling says… jan 22, 2007 | 2:52 pm

Certainly we should take audience into account with this issue, but seeing as designing a quality elastic or fluid layout will add time, and therefore cost to the vast majority of projects, we have to be mindful of the choices we make when earmarking that money and time.

In several projects of limited funds, the money that would go into going the extra fluidic mile could be well spent on research, usability, features, or other nuances of the project.

The scope of this debate needs to be wider than just what method of design to use, it is a debate of how to allocate resources.

23. Jason Santa Maria says… jan 22, 2007 | 2:55 pm

Christian Watson: “Thus, how much will things actually change from how they are now?”

Well, I imagine the same thing that thrust 800px widths into the forefront will happen for 1024px widths; the number of sites and content that consider 1024px to be the base standard will grow. People with larger resolutions will start to browse at wider widths because the base width will have risen.

Do you know anyone who regularly browses with a 640px wide window? (I’m sure they exist, but I’d wager they are in a fierce minority)

24. Dan Bowling says… jan 22, 2007 | 3:07 pm

Jason: “Do you know anyone who regularly browses with a 640px wide window?”

While not on a regular basis, I certainly do at some points. Occasionally while trying to compare two pages, or while I want to reference a portion of a website while I am writing in a word document or using Photoshop, I will shrink down my viewport to a very small size, perhaps to 300px wide to let it just be a small object along the side or top of my screen.

Not to nay-say, but I can really see how this technique could become difficult to do with an entirely fluid site.

25. Jason Santa Maria says… jan 22, 2007 | 3:13 pm

Dan Bowling: (great last name)

“Not to nay-say, but I can really see how this technique could become difficult to do with an entirely fluid site. “

You miss my point a little here, I’m not saying “Do you ever use a smaller window?” I’m sure most of us do from time to time (myself included). But, these are exceptions and outside of a typical browsing experience. We make websites, so we regularly are changing settings, window widths, etc etc.

The only point I’m trying to make in my last comment was that 640px wide browsing was replaced by 800px, likely not due to technology and monitors being able to display 800px wide resolutions, but more likely because content online evolved to the point where a majority of sites designed for 800px wide resolutions.

26. Jeff Croft says… jan 22, 2007 | 3:14 pm

But Dan.…

In that case, aren’t you making a conscious decision to have a small viewport and deal with the consequences (scrollbars, etc.)?

I’m starting to wonder why we treat the web browser so much different than any other application. Every program on my computer sucks when the window gets too small. If I make my iTunes window really small, I can’t read the song titles. So what do I do? Well, I drag it bigger, of course. If I make my Microsoft Word window too small, I can’t see the full page. What do I do? I drag it bigger. If I make my Finder window too small, I have to scroll to see all the icons. So I scroll, or I drag it bigger.

Why is it that we consider it so bad if I user has to have his/her browser window a certain size in order to view all of a web page at once? What makes a browser different than any other app and a web page different that any other document, in this regard?

Scrolling and resizing aren’t evil. They’re core functions of how the user interface for basically every GUI in the world works. Since when did it become necessary to avoid them at all costs?

(Yes, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. Deal with it. :)

27. Allie says… jan 22, 2007 | 3:19 pm

You mean that I’m not the only one who devotes my screen real estate to my current task? ;) Even at 1680x1050 on my 21” widescreen, I almost always have my browser at the full width of the screen. There’s just some comfort in it for me. I prefer command+tab to seeing multiple applications at once.

On another note, working in higher ed, I see at least two or three faculty or staff member computers running 800x600 every week — and not because of hardware constraints, but because of preference. And many of these people are young (in their 30s and 40s), so it’s probably not related to a significant vision deficiency.

While I’m more than ready to embrace 1024-wide design (or at least 960-wide design), one of my audiences is a bit behind the curve. Do you think higher ed will be the slowest to adopt higher resolutions?

28. Jeff Croft says… jan 22, 2007 | 3:23 pm
On another note, working in higher ed, I see at least two or three faculty or staff member computers running 800x600 every week — and not because of hardware constraints, but because of preference.

I used to work in higher ed and saw the same thing. And I told them: “if you prefer 800x600, then you prefer horizontal scrolling.”

As I said, earlier, nearly every major news site has gone to ~1024px wide. Thus, these people that prefer to stick to smaller resolutions simply have to be used to the scrolling. The no doubt see it on sites they visit every single day, so it must be okay with them.

And if it’s okay with them, it’s okay with me. They’ve made a conscious decision to deal with the scrolling, and that’s fine.

29. Dan Bowling says… jan 22, 2007 | 3:39 pm

Jeff Croft: I think you missed my point there. I was mearly playing a bit of devils advocate as well, saying if we design sites in a fluid layout, perhaps users who like to do what I did wouldn’t be able to because the page would be constantly adjusting as they tried to resize their browser.

The fact that I am consciously deciding to deal with the scroll bars, and the limited viewport is irrelevant to the issue (that I raised).

Allie: I work in Higher Ed as well. I know of many professors that browse at 800x600 just so the text is larger. They prefer that, over using the accessibility options built into the OS and browser… and for that, I think Higher Ed won’t move up for some time.

30. Khoi Vinh says… jan 22, 2007 | 4:04 pm

It’s much the same reason as the need to display picturesm but I want to add: one reason that many commercial sites have gone to a wider width is the need to display today’s larger ad units — above the fold.

That’s just impossible in an 800 px width without shoving aside more actual content than just about anyone is comfortable with.

31. Ian Adams says… jan 22, 2007 | 8:46 pm
Jason laughs as he browses the web from his flying car while wearing his new porno-goggles

You got porno-goggles? Sweet!

Seriously, though, I think that there’s not anything inherently bad about optimising for 1024px-wide resolutions. On my site’s redesign, I’d originally planned it as a fluid layout, but CSS didn’t support the things I needed to do with background attachments to be able to pull it off. In the end I was constrained by my images.

32. cpawl says… jan 22, 2007 | 9:28 pm

Yes, You can not please all of the people all of the time. It really does depend on the audience in the end… or at least your best guess. Most modern computers, come with cheap modern displays that can handle 1024 . For those who can not, in the end they will be forced to upgrade. I know this seems harsh but it is also truth. We upgraded are Atari’s to XBox’s, our rotatary phones to cordless and cell phones, our metal gas guzzlers to safer rides with drive side air bags. The best way to help move technology along is to bring forth and unite on a new standard. Hell- if so many didn’t stick up and work with CSS we would still be making table ridden websites because 350 people at public libraries are still using Netscape 4. No regrets- time to move on.

33. Greg says… jan 23, 2007 | 2:18 am

Forget what resolution web needs to be, what resolution do the porno goggles come in and how can I get that hooked up to my iPod?

34. Frank Taillandier says… jan 23, 2007 | 1:20 pm

One web site for all audience, what a dream but we don’t want to <nightmare>go back to the nineties</nightmare> Targetting a unique audience will be more and more difficult - okay, CSS media is here to the rescue, we won’t be able to do without it and standards adoption will grow even more. But when I think of mobile devices (no fixed width there, is it ?), games devices (surfing on the web with Opera on the Nintendo Wii rocks but hey wait : there are plenty of HDTV/HD Ready widths and resolutions). Maybe resolution independance - Mac OS X one again showing the way here but who’s following ? - will be an enlightment for web designers who design only for a common screen’ s width. There will be more and more ways to access a website, this is a never ending story, constantly evolving, you can not rest on your previous experience and have to constantly improve your skills. I really don’t know what is best, I strong believe in fluid/elastic layouts for some screen range - why min-width and max-with are only partially supported by IE7 ? Sadly there isn’t just one solution waiting for you around the corner.

35. Rob Weychert says… jan 23, 2007 | 3:42 pm

Jeff Croft said:

If someone decides to browse with 700px wide windows, then they are making the decision to scroll horizontally. Fine. If someone decides to browse maximized, then they are making the decision to see very long line lengths on some sites. Fine. In both cases, the content is perfectly accessible and usable.

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I value most about the information age is its convenience. It allows me to absorb a lot of information every day, and the sites I might surf through on any given day can easily number in the dozens. Having to change my browser window’s size dozens of times in a day is inconvenient, plain and simple.

I could browse full-screen (1680px), which would accommodate the width of most any site I come across, until I come across a liquid site with a text column that gets too wide. So then I’ll shrink my browser down to a comfortable width for that site, only to find that the next site I visit is wider than my now-shrunken browser window.

Have I resigned myself to horizontal scrolling or excessive line lengths? No. I don’t like either, but I’m being forced to deal with both because designers—whose job is problem-solving—have decided that that particular problem can be put on me, the user. So why even bother with the presentational part of the web page equation? Why bother coming in to work at all? The user’s got it covered.

36. Jeff Croft says… jan 23, 2007 | 4:51 pm
Have I resigned myself to horizontal scrolling or excessive line lengths? No. I don’t like either, but I’m being forced to deal with both because designers—whose job is problem-solving—have decided that that particular problem can be put on me, the user.

Well, you do make a convincing argument, Rob, when you put it that way — but I still think we, as web designers, can’t do everything. And remember, I did say I was just playing devil’s advocate. :)

How do you feel about text resizing widgets in a web page? If you’re like most designers, you feel that they’re a bad idea, because there are already text resizing controls in browsers, and duplicating them is overkill and confusing for users.

I’m basically making the same point here. There are certain controls that are built into a user’s operating system, such as window resizing and scrolling. I don’t feel like expecting people to use them is out of line. That’s all.

Our job is absolutely problem solving, but the fact is (as any web designer knows), you can’t solve all the problems all the time, because of the huge number of variables involved from user to user and computer to computer. As such, it’s usually the best to find a nice middle ground that covers most cases and expect fringe users to “deal with it,” for lack of a better phrase.

An operating system’s window widgets are there to use. I’m not sure expecting users to user them is such a horrible offense. Every other app expects them to be used — I’m not sure why a web browser should be any different. That’s all I’m saying.

37. Tanie linie lotnicze says… jan 24, 2007 | 6:51 am

I stick with 800px designs is it means a lot less work involved in developing a print stylesheet

38. Ian Adams says… jan 26, 2007 | 2:12 pm

I have to agree with Jeff, actually. It’s not so much “dumping everything on the user” as it is trying to not reinvent the wheel. If the user already has a tool that’s built-in, then why should we then provide that tool for them? It’s the same reasoning behind why I don’t use social bookmarking sites.

That said, it’s still rather amazing to me that, in 12 years, the W3C still hasn’t come up with a solution. Being able to specify subsets of your CSS for certain resolutions (say, via media types) would make life so much easier, because then we could optimise our layouts for different resolution ranges all in CSS. Man, that would be nice…

39. Joshua Porter says… jan 29, 2007 | 11:20 am

In addition to the many great points in the post/comments, I wonder if the tools we use to layout designs affects how we ultimately work.

For example, when you’re in Photoshop or Fireworks there is no such thing as fluid layout…unless you create multiple layouts you never see how the design can work at multiple widths.

And many, many projects are passed along to coders at this point. Only designers/freelancers who do both steps have total control over both.

One thing we can be sure of is that the design will work at the width we initially lay it out in. Any deviation from that introduces hurdles.

Maybe it is much safer to stay fixed width at that point, while making the layout flexible is another entire process on top of the initial layout. Other constraints such as time and money begin to rear their ugly head here…and from my own experience it would add a day or two of work to make it nicely flexible. That’s time I rarely have.

40. squeegee19 says… feb 7, 2007 | 8:56 pm

wow… I am surprised to see this debate still going. my clients (various industries) are all switching to 1024 as the standard.

I agree with Jason however, that 1024 fixed-width is a good way to solve a lot of problems and still achieve good, compliant design.

41. michael mckee says… feb 10, 2007 | 9:15 pm

Interesting article, Jason and interesting discussion. I page width is at an awkward stage right now with too many people still using 800 pixel monitors to ignore yet it is sure nice to have the extra real estate a wider design offers.

Flexible, designs, which I used to favor work well for smaller screens but things get quickly out of hand on larger monitors. After spending some time working in a usability lab I have no illusions about most people knowing that they can adjust the width of their windows, especially when using Windows, which encourages a full screen view port.

One can assume that most ALA readers will have larger monitors but not people who visit mom and pop business sites. IE 7’s support for min and max width should help us out in the near future, but for now, all options have serious problems, especially for general consumption websites.

I’m playing with the idea of using IE’s conditional comments to serve different width versions to different users. I’m assuming that most people who don’t use Internet Explorer have support for CSS minimum and maximum width. If people have older browsers, unfortunately, they probably are used to seeing strange looking websites.

I’m creating a conditional statement of width: 980px for IE 6, 760px for older versions (as well as IE 5 for Mac via a filter) and letting IE 7 see modern min and max widths along with Firefox,

42. torrent says… mar 25, 2007 | 5:55 pm

Forget what resolution web needs to be, what resolution do the porno goggles come in and how can I get that hooked up to my iPod?

43. design says… may 20, 2007 | 9:20 pm

It’s amazing how subtle changes in color make a big difference on-screen. The only problem in this is that monitors don’t always display color properly (which sucks!). Colors on my Apple Cinema Display are much brighter and vibrant than a lot of screens… On more than one occasion I have had a coworker and/or client come back and ask why I used a certain color (which appeared horrendous on their screens)…

Anyways… great article.