Fixed-width or Percent-based website design
Question
My question is very basic and generic.
I am starting on designing a page(s) using div tags. now I am confuse with two approaches.
should I keep width and height of divs fixed (ie fixed with pixels) or
should I keep width and height of divs variable (ie using % instead of pixels).
I personally like the first approach where you fix everything and there is very little chance of anything getting disturbed at different screen resolution but the drawback is if screen resolution goes below my expected screen resolution then the scroll bars makes the site look bad(there may be more drawbacks but at present I am not remembering it:) ), so in that case 2nd approach comes into the picture but the thing is once you start using % for your width and height its very difficult to design the page though once its designed its more stable.
I am confused with the two approaches and need inputs on the above two...
thanks in advance.
4 answers
solution1
1 ACCPTED
You answered your own question. The second approach is better in most of the situations, as it would fit all the screen resolutions nicely. Think of when somebody tries loading your page using a mobile phone, then using percentage will help.
And I don't think using percentage make it harder to design, I even think it's easier. For example, if you want to adjust the main table width to be 1/4 of the screen, now you only need to set width: 25% instead of setting (say) width: 250px; and guess if it works on this size of monitor or different sizes of monitor.
Imagine that you're currently working on a 17" laptop, and the width of your page layout is set fixedly 800px that would fit your screen at the moment. But when you run it on the 24" monitor, that layout will look like a paper on a desk.
With percentage, say, 70% would fit your 17" laptop and also, 24" monitor.
Here is a sample fluid HTML page for you to reference, try to see how it looks with percentages. Note that no matter you minimize the screen, the layout can still adjust. Just simply copy and paste, this is the point of designing.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type" />
<title>Untitled 1</title>
<style type="text/css">
html, body{
height:100%;
}
/* Backward Compatible for IE6 */
* html #container{
height:100%;
}
/* Top logo and bottom footer */
div#logo, div#footer {
max-width: 90%;
color:#000000; background-color:#ffffff;
padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;
text-align:center;
margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;
}
/* Top navigation bar */
div#navbar {
max-width: 90%;
color:#ffffff; background-color:#124a9f;
padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;
text-align:center;
margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;
}
/* Container for three lower boxes */
div#container {
max-width: 90%;
height:70%;
color:#000000; background-color:#ffffff;
margin-bottom:10px; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;
}
/* Main content (center box) */
div#main {
overflow:auto;
height: 100%;
padding:10px 10px 0px 10px;
color:#000000; background-color:#efecf8;
}
/* Full navigation menu (left box) */
div#leftcol {
float:left;
width:10%;
height:100%;
padding:10px 10px 0px 10px;
color:#000000; background-color:#bfdbf7;
}
/* Featured content (right box) */
div#rightcol {
float:right;
width:10%;
height:100%;
padding:10px 10px 0px 10px;
color:#000000; background-color:#bfdbf7;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="logo">
Logo
</div>
<div id="navbar">
Navigation Bar
</div>
<div id="container">
<div id="leftcol">Left Column</div>
<div id="rightcol">Right Column</div>
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Sed in lorem. Nullam eu enim. Quisque tristique pretium diam. Fusce tempor sollicitudin ligula. Donec purus eros, mattis quis, mattis vestibulum, congue quis, felis. Nulla facilisi. Nam ultricies posuere justo. In feugiat.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque tempor. Nam in libero vel nisi accumsan euismod. Quisque quis neque. Donec condimentum, enim convallis vestibulum varius, quam mi accumsan diam, sollicitudin ultricies odio ante vitae purus. Etiam ultricies quam. Vestibulum turpis turpis, fermentum ut, accumsan quis, tempor at, ipsum. Nam felis elit, sollicitudin id, ultrices faucibus, fringilla vel, dui. Aliquam tincidunt iaculis eros. Sed in lorem. Nullam eu enim. Quisque tristique pretium diam. Fusce tempor sollicitudin ligula. Donec purus eros, mattis quis, mattis vestibulum, congue quis, felis. Nulla facilisi. Nam ultricies posuere justo. In feugiat.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque tempor. Nam in libero vel nisi accumsan euismod. Quisque quis neque. Donec condimentum, enim convallis vestibulum varius, quam mi accumsan diam, sollicitudin ultricies odio ante vitae purus. Etiam ultricies quam. Vestibulum turpis turpis, fermentum ut, accumsan quis, tempor at, ipsum. Nam felis elit, sollicitudin id, ultrices faucibus, fringilla vel, dui. Aliquam tincidunt iaculis eros. Sed in lorem. Nullam eu enim. Quisque tristique pretium diam. Fusce tempor sollicitudin ligula. Donec purus eros, mattis quis, mattis vestibulum, congue quis, felis. Nulla facilisi. Nam ultricies posuere justo. In feugiat.
</div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
©2011 Ideal Web Design Co.
</div>
</body>
</html>
solution2
0 2011-05-26 16:15:29
That's a question that really depends on what functionality will reside within those divs. If it needs to grow, then percentage is probably warranted. If not, then you should be ok with using px
solution3
0 2011-05-26 16:20:56
It all depends on the layout and design of the website you are creating.
the 2nd approach is used in "fluid" layouts (websites that need to extend and take all the space available to them), otherwise you don't have other notable advantages vs. fixed layouts.
I recommend that you look at the statistics on screen resolutions provided by W3C here: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp
As you can see, 800x600 is almost gone, so focusing on 1024x768 and up will help.
I don't know how far you are into the learning process, but when you feel like taking a look at what most developers use, I recommend you visit the 960 grid system: http://960.gs/
solution4
0 2011-05-26 16:41:19
I guess the 1st approach is better for 99% of the wepapps. You can look Blueprint css framework , is a very easy and clean way to use grid like layouts.
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