Fixed width template : would you cross the 800x600 boundary ?

I know it’s an old question but I thought I’d ask anyway... I noticed most MODx templates were fixed width, respecting the 800x600 boundary (i.e the 780 width limit)...

I have done some experiment with liquid design, but there are still some disadvantage with those, readability is one of them, especially due to IE not understanding max-width (yeah I know there are workaround to make it work but...). I am still more conformtable with fixed width even though I know it would be better to make the jump...

If you’re just doing your own site you can take the time to fiddle and fuss with different layouts. But if you’re in "the business" you’ve got to produce rock-solid sites in a hurry that aren’t going to result in hysterical communications from the client who is on some ancient version of IE on Win98 (still ~20%). Sometimes I’ll even regress to a simple table for the main layout framework just to get the job done.

All websites of my clients respect 800x600 width, there’s a lot of people using 800x600 resolution.

I’m a multimedia developer too, and when i encode video for cdrom i’must respect a 24x cd rom not a 52x cd rom speed.
I must agree with Susan , if you work for business you need a solid product, often a table design...

Moreover i noticied most clients using 800x600 with 20" - 21" monitor and winxp, it’s not only for old bad computers, most clients (over 40) use a low resolution to see big icons and big texts

Hi David,

Did you know that our very own MODx template purveyor Andreas Viklund has released his very first 1024px fixed width template? As a kind of experiment, I believe. I’ve been thinking about this myself for a site I’m working on, so thanks for raising the point.

See Andreas Viklund’s template here: http://www.openwebdesign.org/viewdesign.phtml?id=2729

Best regards,
Mats

Well, for me, I definitely assess on a case by case basis. I have to say I haven’t tried any IE max-width hacks ... I’ve got that to look forward to at some point in the future.

With so many old versions of browsers still in circulation and low screen resolutions being in the majority, a lot of the time fixed-width makes more sense than liquid designs. But, saying that, it depends on the design, required features etc. - and what mood I feel in at that particular moment in time

I don’t do a lot of client work as such so probably have more freedom in the choices made - when I’m doing a website as a favour for friends they’re generally happy to be getting a website at a low cost and let me have bit more of a free-rein on the design elements.

Even then, I make sure the site looks okay in the 800x600 to 1280x1024 range - definitely a case of applying the 80/20 rule and getting a best fit to the intended audience.

Hi all,
This is an issue I’m battling with at the moment too... I’m going with a liquid design, but geez it would be sooooooo much easier to go fixed width!

What do you all think about using a script to detect screen resolution & have say two or three layouts (e.g. one layout for <= 800px width users, another for >800px <=1024px and perhaps even another for >1200px I’ve seen this done sometimes and perhaps it is a good solution for those wanting to take advantage of different resolutions & still have the ’rock solid’ness of fixed width design. Bit more work tho!

Perhaps if one designed multiple stylesheets you could just have one stylesheet for for each layout, and another global stylesheet for the fonts/colours etc so you could still change stuff easily?

I’m thinking of taking this approach on some of my next projects...Anyone have any opinions on this?

Cheers

Seb

@Sebastiaan: If you look carefully at Andreas Viklund’s template mentioned in my earlier post, you can switch between 1024x768px and 800x600px in the upper left column. You can even switch layouts from left-column to right-column on the fly!

You can download the template and find out how he does it. Maybe you can add some Javascript or AJAX code to make it even better?

Best regards,
Mats

Hey Mats,

Yup, thats the exact kind of concept I was thinking of. I’ve also seen javascript used in the HTML source of other websites to automatically detect resolution and load the appropriate style sheet. I might dig around that template to see how the different stylesheets are setup, and then try to find some javascript somewhere to detect browser resolutions.

Cool

Cheers

Seb

Quote from: Sebastiaan at May 20, 2006, 01:56 AM

What do you all think about using a script to detect screen resolution & have say two or three layouts (...) I’m thinking of taking this approach on some of my next projects...Anyone have any opinions on this?

Actually, I do

One of the great things about MODx is the ability to have your CSS stored as MODx documents.

It means that your CSS is parsed and thus that you can use... snippets in them, so my thought is : write a snippet to that effect, and we’ll just have to use it in our CSS to have that up and running

I thought this was interesting so i did some research. I found this bit of javascript http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?p=118686 and modified it a bit to send all other screen resolutions to another page. Hope this helps out