Comments on: Death of Flexible Width Designs

By: Liquid Designs » 100 Gallery Entries! Now vote for the best!

Liquid Designs » 100 Gallery Entries! Now vote for the best! — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 01:23:42 +0000

[...] I would like to announce that today Liquid Designs reached its 100th gallery entry. That means 100 well-made examples of effective flexible design for the whole world to see. We’ve come a long way from December 11th, 2003 when Matt said: Was it that long ago that flexible-width designs were all the rage? They came in with a bang, and left with a whimper. Is anyone still holding out? Are there any good flexible sites left? The only place I see it anymore [is] in web applications (such as the WordPress administration interface) and in lightly designed e-commerce sites like Amazon. [...]

By: web2grow - news and weblog » Blog Archive » Fixed width design

web2grow - news and weblog » Blog Archive » Fixed width design — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 06:46:49 +0000

[...] Some references http://photomatt.net [...]

By: C Montoya

C Montoya — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 10:19:24 +0000

Arguments aside, there are still liquid sites that work.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 22:36:44 +0000

Replying over a year after this post was last commented on feels a bit weird, but I have an argument for fixed width designs that hasn’t been mentioned yet: line length. Some research has been done to determine the ideal length of a line to support readability. For text to be read pleasantly, a line should consist of approximately 12 words. Twelve. This site, albeit fixed, counts about twice that amount. Let alone a liquid design, that stretches text columns over the entire width the reader’s a screen.

I’m not saying everyone should start narrowing their text columns, because 12 words is ridiculously little, but keep in mind that readability plays a key role in a visitor’s decision to stick around or click away.

More information: http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLength.htm

By: Mind of Mog

Mind of Mog — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 01:15:54 +0000

Flexible Width Die
Been reading this and this on the death of flexible width designs which is what I have as I just hate it when I go to a site and see all the text crammed into one little spot with a big, huge space with absolutely nothing, not so much as a pretty pic, …

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 02:27:06 +0000

Hope you killed the debt spam OK. I have really enjoyed this well informed discussion so far. But guys surely there needs to be a relationship between our design choices as to width and what we choose to put in it.Matts entry in the WP css comp has a navbar at 92 pix and a category name of 24 or so characters and it isn’t pretty. Likewise the block quotes at WP and elsewhere frequently burst the containers at even quite wide screen sizes even though there is space at the side. I reckon that deep down you fixed and central guys have a yearning for tables:-). I start top left and work down and across come what may. There may also be constraints if the site/client requires 3 columns. Fixed or Fluid. It’s going to run and run.

By: chris

chris — Sat, 10 Jan 2004 00:15:18 +0000

If you don’t want to read text 14″ wide, why is your browser that wide?

A somewhat snarky question, true, but this is something that really baffles me. The windows resize, and long lines are hard to read, so why do people persist in browsing the web in landscape mode? There’s reinforcement now from wide-format fixed width site designs, but still. I’ve never seen a fixed-width HTML layout that didn’t really honk me off, because they never let me work in windows as narrow as I prefer. Bleh.

(This very blog is an example: I have a scrollbar at the bottom of the window, and am having to dodge back and forth just to make sure I’ve read all the text of peoples’ comments. And yet this window seems medium-to-wide to me….)

By: Christina

Christina — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:32:58 +0000

Um. Zeldman’s layout is fixed-width, so why is he complaining? Also, I believe in restricting line-length. It makes sense to me. Especially with the huge amounts of pixels wide one’s monitor can now be – I don’t want to read text that spans 14+ inches of monitor, thanks very much.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 19:37:38 +0000

For what its worth i’m doing my best, with some company resistance, to convert our company’s site http://www.cegltd.com to a fleixble width design and i think it’s working ok so far. At least on some pages.

By: TechGnome's World

TechGnome's World — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 15:19:27 +0000

I had originally set this as a comment reply to Mat’s post about the death of Flexible Width Sites but began to run long, so I decided to post it here with a trackback.

– Before reading my take on the situation, I suggest reading Death of Flexib…

By: Michel Valdrighi

Michel Valdrighi — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 21:46:16 +0000

As a 1600×1200 user, I can tell you I never browse fullscreen, so liquid layouts don’t bother me (who the hell browses fullscreen in 1600×1200+ anyway?!). However, I’m going to get back to fixed width layouts just because it brings me some kind of warm fuzzy feeling of knowing how my content will likely look like on the visitor’s screen.

By: Matt Brubeck

Matt Brubeck — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 19:04:28 +0000

Matt: Agreed. I would call the 1976design page a “scalable fixed-width design”, or something similar.

By: Adam Rice

Adam Rice — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 16:30:03 +0000

My own page (no assertion as to design quality) uses a flexible main column and fixed sidebar; this was my approach on another site I run where I know I get people using a range of different base font sizes and screen sizes (because of complaints). It’s not perfect; if you increase your font size, the sidebar gets hinky. The CSS is a little hairy, and I’ve been thinking of redoing it using pseudo-tables to achieve the same effect.

I can see the argument against truly liquid layout–arbitrarily long lines are not readable, and a couple of my sites are “rigid.” But I always do scalable (defined in ems rather than px).

By: shaggy

shaggy — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 22:26:31 +0000

There is a easy way to do max width in ie. see.
http://www.svendtofte.com/code/max_width_in_ie/
This site also deals with the real problem with both
approaches. words per line and/or characters per line.

I prefer a fixed width and centered layout myself.
My monitor is set at 1600 and most fluid layouts look pretty bad at that res.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 17:26:04 +0000

Matt, I would say any design where the main content is not relative to the screen size (not the font size) is fixed-width.

By: Matt Brubeck

Matt Brubeck — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 17:22:26 +0000

However, 1976design does use a max-width set in ems, so that content scales with font size (where supported).

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 22:42:01 +0000

David, Dunstan at 1976 Design does not have a liquid design. The header background image stretches, but the content is a fixed width.

By: David House

David House — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 21:20:12 +0000

Some examples of good liquid designs: sidesh0w, clagnut, etc, Adot's Notblog, WAMAS, 1976design. That's just on my blog shortlist.

By: obSERVANT

obSERVANT — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 18:39:33 +0000

Flexible widths indicate that a site will accomodate a variety of viewing options, instead of just one. Zeldman (hallowed be his name) has a site which looks not so hot on 1280X1024 – less than half the screen is used. Whitespace as artistic statement only works when you know what the resolution will be – otherwise you have varying amounts of it and can’t predict the impact accurately. WIRED looks pretty good in whatever resolution you choose.

Fixed widths are SO much easier to design for, but that’s not the point. A web designer works with a fluid medium and should make fluid designs – that’s why we get the big bucks!

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 17 Dec 2003 06:37:26 +0000

“Avoid” may be a bit over the top; I agree that whitespace has a place and a purpose and looks good when implemented well. Perhaps fluid whitespace is what I should have said, rather

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 21:23:52 +0000

Scott, why is whitespace something you want to avoid? The most beautiful and effective designs have great use of whitespace, not just on the web but everywhere.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 19:56:00 +0000

It would make sense to me that liquid layouts allow better use of space, and avoidance of whitespace; going back to fixed-width seems like stepping backwards – like reverting to using tables for layout.

My site (schillmania.com) isn’t a perfect example, but it does try to be fluid and take advantage of all available browser real estate.

Why shouldn’t sites scale? Unlike printed work on a standard 8.5 x 11″ sheet of paper, the Web is rarely browsed through a consistent “viewport”.

By: s t e f

s t e f — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 10:53:39 +0000

Flexible and readable and nice-looking: http://clagnut.com/

My site is also liquid and will stay so. I won’t turn back to all those headaches about choosing which resolution to indulge in.

For instance matt, your site is around 815 pixels wide in my Mozilla. How do you deal with 800×600 people? Horizontal scrollers? Not on my life.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 09:35:28 +0000

Joshua, doing something because everyone else is doing it is never a good reason for anything. If you point out some resources of both sides of the debate I would be happy to link them. This entry was simply that I noticed that my two favorite fluid layouts went fixed within days of each other, and I thought it was worth writing about.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 06:41:27 +0000

Howard, that would actually be an interesting statistic, and I’ll look into compiling that from my stats. BTW, why stay anonymous? I’m curious who you are.

Sian, I’m still hoping either Dave or Dan will post about their design decisions so that should clear up their thinking. That statement was actually made half-sarcastically.