While most fixed width layouts are usually around 750px and centred, which caters nicely for those running 800px resolutions and above.

I`ve noticed quite a few of the big corporations running designs that are fixed width at around 1000px wide. While it`s easier to work with than a fluid design, I always thought the site of a scroll bar was the ultimate sin among designers? A wide design on a 800x600 resolution would result in the dreaded scroll bar.

Is it really that evil to create a site fixed at 1000px?

Reason I ask. I`m looking to redesign my site which has been 760 and centred. I was tempted to try for a fluid layout but the headaches I anticipate make it seem not worth the while. I just like the idea of being able to use the extra space at a larger resolution.

My site uses a lot of large images and maps for geo-science. Many of those maps around around 800px wide. A site designed at 1000px wide would really help me out, because anything smaller means I have to use scrolls/overflow for those large maps to stop my layout breaking.

I would like to go for the fluid design, but I`m pretty new to web design and would likely dig myself into a large hole!!!

Thanks guys.

Welcome Bob!

My stock answer is be careful when following the leads of big corporations, especially as it pertains to web design. Many of the layouts are dated in terms of their code and accessibility, and are built to be "marketing friendly" (translation: they have to look pretty to some know-nothing suit who really shouldn't be offering an opinion anyway).

In the absence of stats, make sure your site works for as many resolutions and browsers as possible; if that means that you have to make your layout 760 pixels and fixed width, so be it. However, the answer to your question may well be sitting in your statistics. If you've run your site for a while now, see what browsers people are using, and see what resolutions they're using. You can adapt your style from there to fit that information.

Fluid layouts aren't as difficult as you'd imagine, and seem like a good idea in your case. That only means so much coming from someone ho hasn't seen yoru site, but I like to display my images at 800x533 px, and I expect visitors to be using anywhere from 800x600 to 1920x1200 displays, so the way I see it, there's usually some unknown amount of wasted space. Letting things wrap and spring is a good way to deal with that.

It's not everyone on the planet who's going to be interested in your site. Sounds like dial-up isn't really your target audience. Can you assume most geo-scientists will have decent displays? Adam's advice about checking your logs is a really good idea.

Thanks guys.

I guess I was looking at the accuweather website too much! However I do like how they have created the layout, rather portal(ish) if I may say so. The maps and images we use are of a similar size and layout.
http://wwwa.accuweather.com/index.as...er=accuweather

I`m actually looking at creating something similar.

It looks like they have created a fixed design at around 1000px.

I hate to reference my site... some may say it's a noob site, none the less, whether its 800x600 pixels or 1280x1024, my site stretches to fit all widths. It's not all that difficult to do as mentioned above, and the reward is knowing your site is viewable in ALL browsers. For me, the question would be this:

Would I feel comfortable knowing people with smaller browser sizes would have problems viewing my site without scrolling left and right?

For me the answer is yes.

For others, well... I see more and more people ignoring 800x600. What a shame.

Yeah I can see what you`re saying

As I mentioned, a large portion of our geo-science images are between 750 and 900 pixels in size. They`re large satellite maps etc.

A fixed width 750px for example which would cater for most folks. This results in overflow/scrollbars for those large images. I don`t know about anyone else, but I find too many scroll bars ugly on a website.

I think it`s looking more and more like I will have go fluid, or create something for 1024 +.

If your geoscience images are that wide, I'd create a layout that kind of resembles www.yellowhousehosting.com/resources (vangogh's blog; he's a mod on here), only take out the two side columns. Just one fixed-width column in the middle (I'd say 950 pixels) and nothing on either side.

Thanks again.

I did find a template during my travels this evening. Kind of has the layout I like, similar to accuweather with a portal type of design. It`s also fluid, with the left and right columns fixed and a liquid centre.
http://www.openwebdesign.org/viewdesign.phtml?id=1705&referer=%2Fsearch.php%3Fs earchstring%3DCalypso%26tab%3Dkeyword

I might use that as base and go from there. I know it`s a fairly old template but at least there are no tables, it`s a start!!

I can use that that for my pages with smaller images and textual content, then for my big geo-science images, I could strip out those left and right columns and just have one large container?

Why not have it at a fixed width of 760px and just resize your large images?If you resize all of the geometric images to be say 100px width your page would load a lot faster.

You could combine GD2 and PHP so that your large images automatically generate smaller versions, which when clicked load the original full size image in a popup window, or new page. You could even implement the Lightbox.js to make your site look fancy

After much deliberating, I have decided to go with a fixed width layout, probably around 760px centered.

I`ve toyed around with a fluid layout, tried min and max width and various other ideas. It`s just too much work getting everything looking good from one resolution to another. Not to mention on higher settings, the website starts looking ugly with long lines of text that could give you neck cramp!!

Way too much work for my liking!!! Call me lazy, but for my needs I believe a fixed width will work better and certainly produce a better looking site all round.

I am new at web design (which is a stretch for what I am doing) and I hadn't even thought about this. I have already put the site up http://closetoday.com and now I noticed that if I lower my resolution the right side of my site is hidden. How do I fix this now?

G

i wish i could help but all im seeing is code and not the design point of view wats up?