Why Is Our Website Not Making A Grand Presence In The Browser?
When we started designing websites a long time ago, monitor sizes varied to a great extent. Many people were still on 15? CRT monitors especially in the corporate world. Few people, especially those clever at negotiating had snared 17? or 19? LCD monitors for a few thousand dollars.
As monitors advanced with time it turned out to be really difficult to determine the best way to display sites and we normally made sites span 100% width.
These days, however, the monitor size chaos has settled down a bit and most people have decided that a 19-21? flat screen is about perfect. As we understand several people have around the exact same size monitor thus there's no actual necessity to span websites 100% width. There are allied cons as well- the main one being you lose the ability of placing things in the exact same position with respect to each other as the page stretches and hence the site will always look a little different on every different monitor. The other is sites with much to read would be really hard to read if they stretched the complete width. Imagine having a truly wide book - there is a reason majority of the books and e-readers are about the same size - this is because it's fairly difficult to read very long lines of text.
With fixed width sites, websites will always appear exactly the same only difference being some sites will have a bit more space down either side.
We build all of our sites at about 1000px wide. This suggests that they will display on a 17" monitor without horizontal scrolling. On a 19" monitor there is a little amount of white space on either sides. On larger monitors there is extra white space (or space for a type of non critical graphical element) but people with larger monitors usually don't have browsers at the full width or they are used to having spare space at the ends.
As a matter of fact 1000px fixed width design has become quite standard. If you check out all of the following leading websites they are all fixed with - around 1000px.
youtube.com facebook.com twitter.com (it's in fact a fair bit below 1000px) ebay.com cnet.com news.com.au realestate.com.au
And the list goes on.
At times we do come across main sites with variable width interfaces like amazon.com. I guess they figure the more real estate they take up the more products they will sell and it seems like they have gone to some lengths to make certain it looks reasonably consistent on several different size monitors. For the major part nevertheless having 1000px fixed width has become quite standard.
As monitors advanced with time it turned out to be really difficult to determine the best way to display sites and we normally made sites span 100% width.
These days, however, the monitor size chaos has settled down a bit and most people have decided that a 19-21? flat screen is about perfect. As we understand several people have around the exact same size monitor thus there's no actual necessity to span websites 100% width. There are allied cons as well- the main one being you lose the ability of placing things in the exact same position with respect to each other as the page stretches and hence the site will always look a little different on every different monitor. The other is sites with much to read would be really hard to read if they stretched the complete width. Imagine having a truly wide book - there is a reason majority of the books and e-readers are about the same size - this is because it's fairly difficult to read very long lines of text.
With fixed width sites, websites will always appear exactly the same only difference being some sites will have a bit more space down either side.
We build all of our sites at about 1000px wide. This suggests that they will display on a 17" monitor without horizontal scrolling. On a 19" monitor there is a little amount of white space on either sides. On larger monitors there is extra white space (or space for a type of non critical graphical element) but people with larger monitors usually don't have browsers at the full width or they are used to having spare space at the ends.
As a matter of fact 1000px fixed width design has become quite standard. If you check out all of the following leading websites they are all fixed with - around 1000px.
youtube.com facebook.com twitter.com (it's in fact a fair bit below 1000px) ebay.com cnet.com news.com.au realestate.com.au
And the list goes on.
At times we do come across main sites with variable width interfaces like amazon.com. I guess they figure the more real estate they take up the more products they will sell and it seems like they have gone to some lengths to make certain it looks reasonably consistent on several different size monitors. For the major part nevertheless having 1000px fixed width has become quite standard.
About the Author:
AWebsiteDesigner.com.au is a company specialising in small business websites. We have been established for 5 years. A Website Designer website which was previously the main website for another web design company. Since then the website has been a leading blog and resource for Australian small business owners. Visit http://awebsitedesigner.com.au to learn more about web design.