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From: dorayme on 27 Jan 2010 15:24
In article <hjpffg$1id$1(a)news.albasani.net>,
jeff <jeff_thies(a)att.net> wrote:

> Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:

> > I'll point to
> >
> > http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/
>
>
> The difficulty in designing complex sites with em widths, or simply
> fluid widths are substantial.
>

If you look at the url itself above, this is as fluid as it needs
to be. And it does a very good simple job of it too. There is the
idea in these discussions that fluid means somehow that whatever
the content is, it should fill the whole screen somehow. But this
is a naive view of fluid design.

The better designs do think of what a whole screen will look like
even when the content is aptly and sensibly confined. These
maxdesign sites do at least think of some aesthetic integration
of the unused space.

> Let's look at what they actually do rather than what they proselytize:
>
> http://www.maxdesign.com.au/sites/
>
> The first three sites listed (I did not look further), are all fixed
> width. And none of those are very complex.
>

On this you are on stronger ground, some of the designs fail in
respect to content being wider than needed. Many of the pages
simply could have the content wrap better without needing to
sideways scroll.

--
dorayme
From: dorayme on 27 Jan 2010 15:35
In article <hjph3k$47t$1(a)news.albasani.net>,
jeff <jeff_thies(a)att.net> wrote:

> Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> > On 2010-01-27, Roy A. wrote:
> >> On 26 Jan, 15:19, jeff <jeff_th...(a)att.net> wrote:
> >>> But to do fluid width design you
> >>> either need to be a genius or have simple content. Not that there aren't
> >>> geniuses or that there aren't sites with simple content.
> >> Fluid design is possible, but they will not be as attractive as fixed
> >> with designs.
> >
> > Fluid designs are neither harder to do nor less attractive than
> > fixed-width.
>
> Prove it. Post up 3 good looking 3 column fluid width sites that have
> relatively complex content.
>
> Even your own site has horizontal scrollbars at 800 px:
>
> http://cfajohnson.com/cryptics/
>
> I can think of only Wikipedia, which is pretty plain jane, although
> attractive.
>
> Fluid web design is damn hard once you get into any kind of
> commercial work. Even the poor examples tend to fail below 800 wide if
> they contain any images.
>
> The creation of aesthetically pleasing sites is vastly under
> appreciated! To do this in fluid width is damn hard.
>
> I am not a designer, but I implement other's designs as part of my
> business. I am also pretty good at html and CSS and I can tell you that
> I can't do it! And to do that in a way that can be easily maintained...
>


Good and interesting challenges Jeff. But, I say it again, it is
no good challenging over implementation of a *naive view* of the
idea of fluid design. It is hardly a criticism of the cryptics
page above that it brings up horizontal bars at 800px. If a
picture is 800px and a user has a window less, of course bars
must come up, it would be a brittle concept of fluid design that
tried to avoid this *at all costs*

Reasonable concepts of fluid design involves, to put it simply,
not making a brittle fixed width design. No, it is not a simple
concept. It is about being flexible where it is appropriate and
no, it does not get theoretically more definite than that.

--
dorayme
From: jeff on 27 Jan 2010 15:48
dorayme wrote:
> In article <hjpffg$1id$1(a)news.albasani.net>,
> jeff <jeff_thies(a)att.net> wrote:
>
>> Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>
>>> I'll point to
>>>
>>> http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/
>>
>> The difficulty in designing complex sites with em widths, or simply
>> fluid widths are substantial.
>>
>
> If you look at the url itself above, this is as fluid as it needs
> to be. And it does a very good simple job of it too. There is the
> idea in these discussions that fluid means somehow that whatever
> the content is, it should fill the whole screen somehow. But this
> is a naive view of fluid design.

I agree.

It is a clever use of background images, which may not work for some
designs. Even so, this gets a horizontal scrollbar at 640. Now, who was
it that said they browse at half of their 1280 screen width?

Browsing at 640 is just not practical, and yet this group sure has a
lot of demands they want to place on website design.
>
> The better designs do think of what a whole screen will look like
> even when the content is aptly and sensibly confined. These
> maxdesign sites do at least think of some aesthetic integration
> of the unused space.
>
>> Let's look at what they actually do rather than what they proselytize:
>>
>> http://www.maxdesign.com.au/sites/
>>
>> The first three sites listed (I did not look further), are all fixed
>> width. And none of those are very complex.
>>
>
> On this you are on stronger ground, some of the designs fail in
> respect to content being wider than needed. Many of the pages
> simply could have the content wrap better without needing to
> sideways scroll.

It is a fixed width world, except for very simple sites and very
clever ones. Wishing it weren't so is an exercise in futility.

With most sites residing in a database and with the content separated
from the presentation, it is much easier to serve an alternate template,
then to have a template that looks substandard just so someone can
browse at 640. The strong trend though is for small screen browsers to
adapt to what is served.

Outside of the html groups, I see and hear none of the complaints
about the sites being fixed width. I have had to do some tweaking on one
site for the iPhone, but that was not *my* html that was askew.

Jeff
>
From: Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson on 27 Jan 2010 17:21
jeff <jeff_thies(a)att.net> writes:

[snip]

> It is a clever use of background images, which may not work for
> some designs. Even so, this gets a horizontal scrollbar at 640. Now,
> who was it that said they browse at half of their 1280 screen width?

I said I'd like to. Unfortunately I can't since the world gets a
horizontal scrollbar at this width. At my default font size, I can't
use gmail very well. To be fair, that one works at 840 or so.

> Browsing at 640 is just not practical, and yet this group sure has
> a lot of demands they want to place on website design.

True, and that's why I gave up the idea. I'm fairly certain that if
browsing with non-maximized windows were the norm, we'd be seeing more
narrow-window friendly sites. And perhaps the technology to make it
practical such as drow-down menus that can appear (partially) outside
the browser window.

Alas, one has to bow to the will of the multitude.

>> The better designs do think of what a whole screen will look like
>> even when the content is aptly and sensibly confined. These
>> maxdesign sites do at least think of some aesthetic integration of
>> the unused space.
>>
>>> Let's look at what they actually do rather than what they
>>> proselytize:
>>>
>>> http://www.maxdesign.com.au/sites/
>>>
>>> The first three sites listed (I did not look further), are all
>>> fixed width. And none of those are very complex.
>>>
>> On this you are on stronger ground, some of the designs fail in
>> respect to content being wider than needed. Many of the pages
>> simply could have the content wrap better without needing to
>> sideways scroll.
>
> It is a fixed width world, except for very simple sites and very
> clever ones. Wishing it weren't so is an exercise in futility.

Yes. Sometimes simle is enough:

http://www.myrkraverk.com/magic/

But most of the time it isn't.

> With most sites residing in a database and with the content
> separated from the presentation, it is much easier to serve an
> alternate template, then to have a template that looks substandard
> just so someone can browse at 640. The strong trend though is for
> small screen browsers to adapt to what is served.
>
> Outside of the html groups, I see and hear none of the complaints
> about the sites being fixed width. I have had to do some tweaking on
> one site for the iPhone, but that was not *my* html that was askew.

I'll add that the worst sites I've come across, wrt. fixed-width and
painfully useless layouts are sites without any useful content.


Johann

From: Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson on 27 Jan 2010 17:31
dorayme <doraymeRidThis(a)optusnet.com.au> writes:

> In article <m3fx5snoqg.fsf(a)myrkraverk.com>, Johann 'Myrkraverk'
> Oskarsson <johann(a)myrkraverk.com> wrote:
>
>> For an example of a story site with narrow margins, you can take a
>> look at
>>
>> http://www.literotica.com/
>>
>> which may not be work safe.
>>
>
> Your point about the latter being?

I deliberatily didn't direct-link to a story.

The stories are presented in a narrow columnt which makes it easy to
read. Web designers usually don't know, or don't care that pleasant
reading doesn't involve moving your head from side-to-side. Make a
note of this next time you read a paperback.

I'll add that literotica is one of the last places where I look for
reading material. I may have finished gutenberg before I do so.

Compare with this comercially published web story, with your browser
maximized on your desk-wide lcd monitor [random story]:

http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0671721771/0671721771.htm

I usually "restore" the tab in opera, so I can fit the width nicely to
the font size (zoom) I choose for reading these Baen books.


Johann

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