Fixed or Fluid Website Design?
Many of our customers use existing website designs or have their own website designers. Some are professionals with a lot of experience in the field, and some are just getting started with web design. In both cases, one of the first questions that needs an answer has to do with the type of design - fixed or fluid. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
This is further complicated by the fact that you can’t control the way a site visitor has configured their monitor and browser! So - while you might really WANT ever visitor to only see a single page (no scrolling) on your home page - you only have a limited capacity to make that happen. Your visitor might have a tiny monitor (think cell phone) or a huge one. And it might be in portrait or landscape mode. And they might size their browser window up or down, or make is tall and skinny or wide and fat - and you don’t get to pick!
You DO get to pick in general though -and that’s where the fixed vs. fluid conversation comes in.
In a nutshell:
- Fixed: This is a design that has a fixed pixel count - and if you adjust your browser window -the content doesn’t change. So - if you make your browser window smaller - then you have to scroll right and left, or up and down.
- Fluid: This is a design that is based on percentages -so that when you re-size your browser window - the whole website resizes to use all of the available space.
Here are some quick links to additional articles about fixed vs. fluid design:
http://www.flyte.biz/resources/newsletters/04/12-fluid-v-fixed-web-pages.php
http://www.destroyallmonsters.biz/articles/guidelines-for-designers/fixed-versus-fluid/
http://www.wolf-howl.com/random-thoughts/fluid-fixed-and-1024-resolutions/
neil wrote:
for me its got to be fixed every time. a fluid website can stretch out of proportion on certain resolutions
Posted on 18-Jul-08 at 11:33 am | Permalink
patricks wrote:
One of my experts, Joel Davis provided some great feedback - he pointed out that there is a THIRD option, called elastic. Elastic is basically fixed width, but the width is determined by the size of the font, so if the user increases the font size, the page grows to keep the line lengths approximately the same. In a fixed width design, the page would hold the same width and the number of words on each line would decrease as the size increases.
Many browsers are “catching up” and obviate some of the coolness of elastic design - they provide a “zoom” button that grows and shrinks pages.
Here’s a great website that lets you look at each kind of design: http://headscape.co.uk/layouts/
Posted on 22-Jul-08 at 6:43 pm | Permalink
wends wrote:
i think its still better to use fixed width but not for 1024 and not 800×600 anymore unless you want a lot of extra whitespace outside the site borders.
Posted on 07-Aug-08 at 7:47 pm | Permalink