Howdy Folks
I believe that there are huge benefits to fluid design above those required by accessibility and the biggest is simply this:
If I have a large monitor, I can set the size of my browser accordingly, it doesn't have to fit the full width of the screen, a
fluid design allows me to tailor it to how I wish to see it. Shunt some fixed widths in there and suddenly I have to accommodate
someone else's idea of how big my monitor is into my browser. In some sinister and annoying way it takes me back to the heady days
of <flash>, using tables to align witty jpg or gif images, and arguments about what the average size of monitor is in Higher/Further
education - should we design for 640x480? How about 1024 by.......

CSS is a breath of fresh air for me because handling all that junk back then simply made the job difficult and a forever lurking
suspicion that somewhere, someone with a Mac Plus screen, a 15 inch monitor or perversely a 32 inch wide screen is going to curse me
for fixing my site at the 800x600x size my own monitor looks comfortable at.

Alas, no, not all device and embedded service manufacturers produce kit which intelligently resizes sites to be viewed within a
small screen, and Ive tested symbian and Windows based phones, Palmos, Wince and even Linux based screens and, small to large, its a
pain in the bum to be scrolling around a tiny sub window view of a site fixed at 800 pixels wide.

I too have had clients who can't get out of the old 'paper print' view of their presence, and it too can be a pain, but I actually
find the various amounts of legislation aimed at Accessibility now to be a boon in convincing folks to move out of that fixed mode
and into the much more flexible and powerful media that modern web design has to offer. 

I'm not keen on hacks, but until the world has moved its backside onto a fully compliant browser that works as it should I am
perfectly happy to stick in those that work and do the job. I hope they crack it in IE7 too, but I strongly suspect they will merely
beggar something else up instead.

By the way Keith - hows life! Thought you were still at Mancat?

Steve Nisbet





Web Technical Support Officer
Information Systems Unit
Manchester Metropolitan University

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>>> Keith Doyle <[log in to unmask]> 08/12/2005 09:59 >>>
I use fixed width design because of the usability issues of fluid widths
with high resolution monitors and the mess caused by a small resized
window. Is there really a problem with devices with small screens? My
mobile phone interprets fixed witdth pages so that I can easily scroll
down the content.

I don't like designing with hacks, so for a fluid design to work on IE6
is just too risky. I am hopeful that the final version of IE7 CSS will
support min-width and max-width, then we will all be able to design
fluid layouts that are both usable and accessible without iffy hacks.

Keith


> 2  If you go for fixed width, you're discriminating against 
> the rising number of devices that can browse XHTML but don't 
> have standard desktop monitor display sizes (you can write 
> separate anticipatory style sheets for these, but why 
> struggle to keep up when you can plan for accessibility?). 
> Also, if your user overrides or changes their browser text 
> size you're usually scuppered with fixed width, plus you 
> might at time need to accommodate content outwith your 
> control (like a long hyperlink label or wide table).




Keith Doyle
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