[WEB4LIB] Re: Web Page Width - To Restrict or Not to Restrict

[Samuel Mcdonald]

Hi:

This sort of  discussion is often framed with the terms "liquid design"
(vs "ice"). Searching Google for "liquid design" returns many useful sites
for understanding how to do liquid design.

One of the more important issues is text width.
eg. see the quote:
"...
Conventional design wisdom has been to restrict the width of flowing text
to somewhere between 550 and 780 pixels wide, using tables to do this.
..."
  http://lois.co.uk/web/articles/page-widths.shtml


-Sam


On Thu, 17 Mar 2005, Sue Kamm wrote:

> When I was learning webpage design, back in the days when we had to use chisels to create them :-), one instructor suggested denoting page widths by percent.  Don't know if that will help or not.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Smith, Sarah" <sarah.smith at fresnolibrary.org>
> Sent: Mar 17, 2005 11:42 AM
> To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] Web Page Width - To Restrict or Not to Restrict
>
>
> There's some discussion in my organization as to whether to restrict the
> width of web pages on a site or let them grow per resolution. I've
> noticed many sites restrict actual content width (including menus,
> headers, footers) to fit at 800x600 resolution. I've made sure the pages
> are viewable (they scale down) to fit width-wise in an 800x600 setting,
> but I also allowed them to "grow" to fill up the width of a 1024x768 (or
> other size) screen/resolution setting. Are there any guidelines as to
> whether one *should* or *should not* set a specific (max) width? Thanks,
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
>
> Your friendly CyberGoddess and Councilor-at-large,
> Sue Kamm
> Inglewood/Los Angeles, CA
> Truest of the Blue, Los Angeles Dodgers Think Blue Week 2000
> Visit my home page:
> http://suekamm.home.mindspring.com/index.htm
> email:  suekamm [at] mindspring.com
> "What I wonder is, where are all the guys who just like to play baseball?"
> --Wes Parker, former Los Angeles Dodgers infielder
>
>