Dynamicly resizable

I don’t know if this is really called dynamic... but it seemed suitable.

Try this site and resize the browser window.
http://www.weblogtech.com/
Can something like that easily be done with MODx ?

Of course. It’s all in the CSS, using relative dimensions (percentages), just like it is in the site referred to. Templates and CSS are very easy to work with.

Is there any real trade-off to make sites as dynamic as this one?

There is no trade-off, if you mean performance-wise.

You just have to define minimum and maximum sizes for the content area, as explained here. "Gutters" are a good idea too.

Check this article out, it might help you :
http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/liquid/
and this http://css.maxdesign.com.au/floatutorial/tutorial0915.htm

:)

Yep, Liquid Layout.

I heard that it will be popular for this coming 2006. Ehmm actually we are on it right now. lol
It’s not hard to do that, and there will be no performance penalty in creating those kind of design, except the fact that you need to make sure that your design is compatble with all browser, which usual with liquid design it’s a little bit harder compare to fix size design.

Hemm. Not that I interested, but the design to make it looks good also hard. Imagine the paragraph that suppose to span over 5 lines, and when you resize the browser, it span to 2-3 lines only, and it will surely make the appearance looks different and alittle bit empty. In this case, your design imagination need to be used to ensure the best possible of the website, no matter you’re viewing it in 800x600 or 1280x1024.

I agree with you, I still do not use liquid layouts often for the reasons you mention... yet some people do a very good job of making very nice liquid layouts. It probably takes some mastering...

One thing that makes them so useful is the increasing number of people who have "big screens". Most of us designers still have to take into consideration those remaining 15 inches screen (in France, something like 14 to 15% of the market). On a 17 or 19 inches screen, or even on wide screen laptops, it’s a great loss of space....

About the content being thrown off by resizing, as explained on the articles you can set max-width for content (but not all browsers understand it...).

It makes more sense taking the viewport as reference point. Yet it makes thing sometimes hard to figure out when designing... not to mention, as you say, those unnerving cross browser compatibility issue... Sadly, the upcoming IE7 won’t help that much solving the "IE factor"...

There is still many things preventing the web to be at its "full potential", first of which Internet Explorer. I mean when you see what CSS3 has to offer, you first drool at the prospect and second you start wondering if IE will support those in 2010 (IE7 won’t even support CSS2 fully ).

Why oh why is M$ bothering us... and why oh why people don’t switch browsers and drop IE...