The thing that always bugs me about fluid layouts is line-lengths for pieces of text. In that example, the line length of the main text varies between about 280px (when the window is around 800px wide) and about 720px when the window gets smaller. That's quite a range.<p>In terms of typographic design and readability - that can be a problem - not sure what the solution is, but I do find it to be an issue.
"Don't define height and width of images inline".<p>Not a good practice!<p><a href="http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rendering.html#SpecifyImageDimensions" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rendering.html#...</a>
I recently tried to switch to using non-fullsize browser windows, which is pretty much the reason for windows I think, but so many sites force huge page widths that it becomes unusable.
Our new app is designed fluid with a min-width of 728px, which means it will fit inside iPad, while stretch out on desktop. With "Responsive Design"¹ you could also show/hide features depending on the screen estate.<p>¹ <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/" rel="nofollow">http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/</a>
I'm sad that fluid designs are not more common. This is how HTML was intended. I like to play with the size of my windows to fit whatever I'm doing side by side. The only thing I think is acceptable is a maximum text width for those with the "maximize" disease, but please, no minimum...
How about just choose a grid that best fulfills the needs of the project?<p>I don't mean to be curt, but using an existing grid saves you half an hour at best and might not even be a good match for your needs. The solutions that let you dial in a width and column count are better, but there's so many kinds of grids that it seems like prematurely restricting your solution.
I'd like to use fluid more but unfortunately for us I don't think it would ever work because my boss is too anal over appearance. It's hard not use absolute heights and widths with the designs he comes up with. I think 1140 to 960 fluid would be great thing to try though. Still gotta optimize for 960px so you look good on tablets and other smaller screens. I think trying to be fluid below 960px is just stupid. Right now mobile sites need to be fast and efficient and you can't speed things up enough by just changing your CSS, the underlying HTML must also be compact.
Many netbook screens come in 1024x600, so I wouldn't plan for everyone to have 1280 columns just yet. TFA talks about mobile versions degrading gracefully, but not about desktop browsers on small screens.
Terrible idea. 1024 works very well with the iPad. Unless your app is specifically designed to display large amounts of data I think improving the tablet's browsing experience is too important.
The problem with this is that it assumes users want a bigger browser, which they generally don't. I browse full-screen on a 1024x768 screen because that seems consistent with the width of a standard printed magazine page.<p>On bigger screens, users don't want a wider browser window. Instead, they want room on the sides of the page to do other things, either sidebars within the browser or other apps outside the browser window.<p>960px is the perfect width so you don't get a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the window. It's also consistent with most other sites.<p>Finally, 960px looks appropriate on ipad and other tablets.
I still _regularly_ visit customers who have CRT monitors running at 800x600. I would say that the vast majority of users are still running at 800x600 on xp or lower.
I don't think I've seen a fluid design that is not just filling the available space for sake of filling the available space.<p>If you know any I would love to see them, thanks.
960gs fluid can be altered to be 1140px wide. It just needs a max-width attribute on the container_12 class - <a href="http://goo.gl/2Jdla" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/2Jdla</a><p>*Edit: The gutters also scale with viewport size and the nested elements can be fluid too.
Asking whether or not we should "scrap" a certain resolution is missing the point. Media queries are far more exciting than "whoa, I can make my page super wide now" will ever be.<p>And the big gutters are a nice touch.
Wider is better...until problems begin. Apple.com's chosen 984px width is a good choice, for a variety of reasons: <a href="http://j.mp/HowWide" rel="nofollow">http://j.mp/HowWide</a>