Web Design Brisbane

If you have a website, chances are that its design falls into one of the following categories: fixed, or liquid. A liquid design shrinks and expands to fill the browser window, while a fixed design remains a static, inflexible size.

So which is better, and how much does it matter?

FIXED LAYOUTS		LIQUID LAYOUTS
PROS More control over final look Tend to look “cleaner”		PROS Fills any size screen Good when lots of information has to be on screen at the same time – means less scrolling!
CONS Can look too small on big screens (or too big on small screens!) Only so much information you can display at once		CONS Hard to get looking right Long lines of text can be hard to read Can look inherently “messy”

A website does not have to be exclusively one or the other. It is possible to utilise a combination of both layouts – a website that expands to fill a large screen, but refuses to shrink or expand past certain points!

It is even possible for experienced designers to overcome the problem of fixed-width designs appearing “empty” by intelligently choosing backgrounds that complement the content.

So the decision can come down to several factors: amount of information on the screen, complexity of site, importance of visual simplicity and personal preference.

There are plenty of examples out there of both great and awful sites with both types of layouts, so in the end, it is less a question of “which is better”, and more of a question of “which is better for you“.

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Tags: css, usability

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