Liquid layout

[harry]

Guys, it is said that page layout using liquid/fluid design will adapt all resolutions and webpages will adjust themselves according to screensize and resolution set.
Have anyone tried building their site using this fluid layout ? how it performed ?

[kev woodman]

I've used liquid layouts quite often - they are great if you have a reasonably straightforward page and in a perfect world everyone would use them all the time. Having said that they are not always ideal - particularly if you're working with a lot of live data.

Using a liquid layout is a good way to learn some of the fundamentals of CSS and a quick way to get really annoyed with cross-browser incompatibility. I'd look up conditional comments if I were you - you'll need them

There are lots of really good CSS tutorials but for layouts try blog.html.it/layoutgala/ or glish.com/css/ . |Get some CSS under your belt and you can call yourself a Web designer and start wearing retro trainers and stuff

[paul]

Well, Ironically, the image will display slightly different size in mac amd PC, I would suggest to avoid fixed width tables and oversized imagemaps if you thought to use it.

[Peter]

The one drawback of liquid layouts that I have heard is as screen resolutions continue to grow, most liquid layout sites produce line lengths that are uncomfortable to read when the user’s browser window is set wide, line-lengths get annoying when you’re on 1280+ resolution.

[kev woodman]

That's a really good point Peter.

Best practice would probably a liquid layout designed within a container that maxed at 1280. That way you could centre the container for users at very high resolutions while retaining the fluid layout for those on smaller monitors.

[sanderson]

Liquid and Fixed both has some drawbacks as well as advantages. Therefore, I think you can take advantages of both by using a perfect combination of it. For example, you can use liquid layout to fill or decorate background instead of leaving a white patch. Going 100 percent for liquid is surely not a good option. Although it mostly depends on what type of items / content, the site is going to publish on the page.

[kev woodman]

Why would you use a liquid layout for a background?

If you wanted a background for the whole page you would just apply a background image to . Obviously to fill the background at any resolution it would need to be able to be tiled but that doesn't count as a liquid layout.

At the moment a 100% liquid layout is an excellent option for most sites, you don't need to worry about testing at different resolutions and you can be sure that if a visitor resizes her text that your layout won't fall apart. The real drawback, other than the one Peter mentioned, is that anything other than a simple liquid layout is a pain in the arse.

[harry]

Using semi-liquid layout pattern would be an better option than of fixed and liquid.

I think using liquid layout there is very little control over the width of the elements ( image file placed in liquid column ) of webpage, in such case try to use fixed layout so the width would not get disturb as of in liquid it does.
It's just an opinion; your feedbacks are welcome….

[kev woodman]

The point of a liquid layout is that you don't have control over the size of the page elements although this doesn't affect embedded objects like images (they always stay the same size). You give up control in order to improve the experience of the visitor.

[harry]

Kev,
i have read somewhere that,
Liquid layouts can have problems when a fixed width element, such as an image, is placed inside a liquid column.
If the column is rendered without enough space for the image, some browsers will increase the column width,
disregarding the designer's instructions, while other browsers will cause overlaps in text and images
to achieve the correct percentages.

[kev woodman]

Yeah that's right but that doesn't change the size of the image - it just breaks the layout. If you're creating a liquid layout this is the sort of thing you have to plan for and accept. Obviously any layout is going to stop functioning at some level but a liquid layout should be readable at any resolution from, say, 800x600 through to 1280x1024 and regardless of the size the user chooses for text.

If you're designing for the Web then you have to accept the fact that you really have very little control over how the user views your page. Unless you mainly work with enclosed systems and can be a bit more dictatorial, like lucky lucky me