Dan Benjamin Posted…

The ability to control the way a page is rendered is important to a "digital designer" the same way that controlling the form factor of a book, pamphlet, magazine, or billboard is to a "traditional" designer.

The closest that we, as digital designers, can get to controlling our page's form factor is the fixed width.

Fluid width is not dead, just tedious when tight visual control is important.

a Posted…

"And it worked in cool ways because it was the nature of the medium. At least, that’s what I remember taking out of that talk. "

Not sure I follow this. In what way is it the "nature of the medium"? That might be partially true when designing a purely template-based site, like a Webmonkey or a Wired magazine, but why is it true for a personal site? Or a marketing site?

Jeremy Flint Posted…

We go back and forth between fluid and fixed. It usually depends on the amount of content in a site. If there is only a paragraph or two on each page, and maybe a picture, a fluid design would/could stretch the content out and make the site look thin on content.

I think it really comes down to the audience the client is trying to reach, and the amount of content the site will have, and designing for that content.

Jason Posted…

There is a long list of resources out there that provide all that one needs to master a variety of basic fluid layouts. In addition, if you're working with tableless XHTML, the task becomes even easier.

I believe the decision falls on the opinion of the designer. The push for use and perfection of fluid layouts seemed to be a bit out of hand a year or two ago, but now it's become a staple of design in the web medium. It does however seem that many of the influential bloggers out there today do in fact have fixed-width designs, and this fixed-width trend may be either an attempt to escape yesterday's fashion or a sad example of "keeping up with the Jones."

Rob Dudley Posted…

Design for the Medium, or Design for Presentation/Design/Print?

Stepping out of the confines of the actual discussion I'd say this question itself raises an interesting point.

I'm of the opinion that "design" is what you do to make something look good (or not) where as the work you do to ensure that your design is flexible within the chosen media of distribution comes under a term that I really can't find a name for.

When I sit down with Photoshop and create mockups I am designing. When I transfer those mockups into XHTML and CSS I am still designing and yet I confine myself to designs that will respond well to changes or differences in the media - normally HTTP.

It very rarely occurs to me that I should have to design a fluid layout or a static one. I build pages to the format that suits the project best (or to the format that currently takes my fancy) but I do so on the strict understanding that the design must be flexible.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is this; design should be for the media first and the aesthetic second but there are no caveats on the aesthetic if the media is well used.

Darrel Posted…

Neither is right or wrong. Both have pros. Both have cons.

The best advice I ever got in terms of web design is this: Web design is more about suggesting a design than dictating one. Both methods allow the visual designer to suggest a layout. The fixed-width one is just a bit more heavy handed.

Lars Kasper Posted…

I hate those fixed layouts, especially on weblogs and other content-heavy websites.

Generally, on those blogs the font size is far too tiny for me to be read, so I have to increase the font size several times in my browser (if the eagle-eyed designers would respect my chosen font size in my browser's preferences that would not be necessary). But when I increase the font size, the width for the main content text does not increase, and it will end in something like three words per line. This is also unreadable.

Liquid layouts grow and shrink with my font size. And when they are done very well, unnecessary elements (as long as you are reading the actual content) like navigation and sidebars do not waste valuable space for the main content, but move to the top or bottom of the page.