I recently wrote that the web has too many variables to create a static page that displays well in everyone's browser. Now a set of articles has caught my eye, and made me think that I was more correct than I thought. One such article at Digital Web Magazine, talks about the fluidity of site design. Digital Web sites three different strategies for page creation.
First, there is ice. Ice includes a fixed-size presentation. The second is jello. This is a presentation that fills a large percentage of the viewing area, and is centered. The third is liquid, consisting of a site that will expand to fill the browser at any screen resolution.
If you haven't guessed, all three presentations are realized through tables.
What's really great is that Zeldman, top design guru, admits that A List Apart is designed with a fixed view size because, well, that's what he and his editors felt was the way to go.
Total heresy.
Here's my heresy; I'm more convinced than ever that liquid sites are the way to go, but it's time to abandon catering to 640 screen resolution.
I sat down the other day and took a look at some monitors in an advertisement. Some of these monitors have recommended resolutions of 1280. Twelve-eighty! There is no way that a site can reflow text from 640 to 1280 and look anywhere nears the same. Remember the design rule of not making a page too long? This means that your short page at 640 is completely splayed across the horizontal at 1280.
No, 800 must be the minimum expected screen resolution that a site will display without scrolling. See, I just don't care about Mr. and Ms. 640-No-Scroll. There are too few of them to worry about.
Does this sound bad?
It shouldn't. We don't care about Netscape 3.0 users or those with WebTV or text-only browsers. We don't care about any number of things, like people with their gamma out of whack, colorblind people, people who blow their text up to ridiculous sizes, people without JavaScript support and so on. In fact, the only real consideration designers make outside of designing for the two major browsers is how search engine robots will view a site. And from the persistent use of frames I've seen by large, professional sites, they're not all that concerned.
Heck, I'm starting the get the impression that the design community is beginning to abandon the Netscape 4.0+ series. Increasingly, I'm seeing JavaScript written solely for Explorer 4.0 and above. I guess the fairly good news about Netscape 6.0 beta is influencing the energy scripters are willing to expend on browser compatibility. (Time will tell regarding this).
If I did Browser Comparison over again, I'd do it without 640 screens in mind. Maybe there's still time for a redesign…
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