Web Page Layout

As far as I see currently fixed page layout dominates web design. But for some reason I don't like it. Perhaps because I look at it from the programmer standpoint.

For a designer the task is to put stuff on the page so that it fits it best. And fixed layout makes it easy. It gives precise control to the designer.

For me fixed layout is effectively disabling layout as such. Web standards were designed with maximum flexibility in mind. Modern browsers go with sophisticated layout engines that support this flexibility. Any window size, any available font, any user preferences - the browser is up to do all the required job.

But they say - no, thank you, 960px window is all that we need. We assume that that's going to work fine with all monitor resolutions that are on the market these days.

But such assumptions go against my software developer's instincts. Putting arbitrary limits on the page size for me is akin to using a fixed-size buffer for input. A sufficiently large buffer would work in 99.999% cases. But the rules of robust software development require to take care of the remaining 0.001% cases as well.

Therefore I like the idea of fluid and elastic layouts. I created my home page more than a year ago and I used a simple minded elastic layout for it. I had left the page design technology in the late 90s when the dominant layout method was based on tables. So I had to play the catch up game. I learned about these new layouts methods from various blog entries:

http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=199

Now as I am pondering about improving my home page design I came across a number of articles that describe the grid design approach. Somehow I missed it the first time around. For instance, I like this article:

Fluid Grids

I am going to play with "fluid grid" a bit and if it goes well then I perhaps will adopt it for activationrecord.net.