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Licensing
Fixed Website Layout Plus Side?
Well I got thinking today all about full layout’s Vs 800 pixels width, and thinking about it their are good things about both layouts.
Full Layout Designs.
- They fit a wide variety of screen resolutions.
- Allows you too add more content with out getting the cluttered feeling.
- More complex to make a CSS layout using a full layout.
800 by 600 Layout Designs.
- Its a fixed layout meaning it isn’t resized when the viewer changes the size of the browser.
- You can create images easier for the layout as you would be using a fixed size for example I design with a image of 750px by 50px for the top curb of my site.
- Faster to design, you can put a simple 800 by 600 layout in a couple of hours using a CSS layout.
My method of designing websites is to always use 800 by 600 layouts mainly as no one any more uses under that layout size as a screen resolution their for allowing me to build a fixed layout and that allows me to see what it will look like on everyone’s computer instead of having a full layout which could look really awful on a 1600 by 1200 screen resolution.
Comment Kian Ann
I was initially concerned about designing layouts beyond 800 by 600 too, and then I visited yahoo and found their site about 900px wide - so since the internet giants are already optimizing for 1024 x 768 as the minimum resolution, its time to change
Still again, the benefit of having a narrow layout is that your content will flow down. Most people don’t like to read long sentences from the left to right of the monitor, we are too used to the newspaper and books.
I read somewhere that the best layout for scanning is 7 words per line!
Comment Mike Markie
7 words thats just crazy!
I would have to say Yahoo have made the wrong move their http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats check out the link it shows stats of who uses what etc…
Even if 1% of the stats use 800 by 600 you should still be designing for it, you shouldn’t follow Yahoo or any other site, their just pushing people to change what they like which is stupid, let the public decide if their still using 800 by 600 don’t force them to change by designing more than 800 by 600 :D.
Comment neutron2k
Fixed layouts are easier to work with than dynamically sized sites. You have a hard time positioning things with ’stretchy’ sites and they NEVER gracefully reposition anything.
Theres still a lot of people around who use a resolution of 800×600, and leave them out of your design planning is bad news. The best way to design is to take the minimum resolution your operating system (such as XP) will support in normal mode, which is presently 800×600. This just covers you and doesn’t cost you any traffic from disgruntled visitors.
Obviously stretchy sites (shouldn’t) have any problems on any resolution, but the problem here is discipline. People thinkg, oh wide format so I can cram a ton of content and columns in. You can’t. You make the site a mess.
It can be done effectivly however with good planning.
I wrote an article on this issue a while back as Mike knows. You can find it at http://www.n2kdesign.co.uk/viewarticle.aspx?aID=3&search=box
Comment Mike Markie
Yeah long layouts make people think they can cram loads of crap into it like messy adverts but it really does put people off, I did make a layout for this site where it was a full lasyout and i did find it really hard to design for because it really is hard to make sure you dont put too much stuff in it so i went back to the 800*600 layout which is so much easier.