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Re: fixed width or resizable pages

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From: Austin, Darrel
Date: Nov 9, 2004 11:02AM

> Basically: a fixed layout only works on a certain size monitor (see
> Jakob Nielsen (1999) [1]).

More specifically:

A fixed width layout only works (properly) in a browser viewport that is at
least as wide as the fixed width.

One of the misconceptions of folks that immediately jump to the fixed width
solution is that there is some sort of correlation between web page 'size'
and monitor resolution. For the most part, there isn't.

> You also automatically take lower resolutions into account which is
> just fine -- there ain't many people travelling around with 640x480
> resolutions, but those will be also rather accommodated, too (I
> assume that you'll "optimize" for 800x600 otherwise).

Again, throw out the whole concept of screen resolution. It's irrelevant.

(even if it was, don't forget that more and more folks are using web
browsing devices that are much SMALLER than 640x480...PDAs, Cellphones,
etc.)

> There are studies claiming that it's better (more readable) to use
> only x words per line (which varies, younger people tend to prefer
> shorter line lengths, as there are other tradeoffs to consider [2]).
> Thus you'll more likely excess any such threshold with a liquid
> layout.

Though note that if 'x' = a specific number, a fixed width will do nothing
to obtain that, as a simple changing of text size will completely change
that variable.

None of this was meant to argue your post...merely expanding upon it.

-Darrel