Why You Should Design Fixed-Width Websites

Re:Why You Should Design Fixed-Width Websites by Daniel_Newby on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @06:44PM (#486422)

"I've never seen -- but often wished for -- a fluid-width layout that automatically scales its text so that the average line in the main content has 8-12 words on it."

That's easy to do with a fixed width in units of ems:

    min-width: 15em;
    max-width: 35em;

For IE 6/7, conditionally add:

    width: 35em;

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Re:Why You Should Design Fixed-Width Websites by ars on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @08:03PM (#486497)

Actually for IE6/7 do:

  width: expression(
      document.body.clientWidth >
        35 * parseInt(document.body.currentStyle.fontSize)
      ?
        "35em"
      :
        (document.body.clientWidth <
          15 * parseInt(document.body.currentStyle.fontSize)
        ?
          "15em"
        :
          "auto"
        )
  ;

(Hope the indenting is readable.)

http://www.gunlaug.no/contents/wd_additions_14.html for some caveats and other notes, in particular you can not specify a font-size at all for the body element (if you do, then do the math yourself and not in the expression).

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Re:Why You Should Design Fixed-Width Websites by gojomo on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @09:28PM (#486606)

That's easy to do with a fixed width in units of ems

Almost, but not quite. That adjusts the width to match the font-size. I want the other way around: adjust the font-size to match the width. (If I make my browser window wider, the text should scale up.)

Currently, this would take Javascript -- either adaptively scaling the font until the desired words-per-line is reached, or calculating what font-size would mean the existing width, whatever it is, is ~35em.

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Re:Why You Should Design Fixed-Width Websites by Daniel_Newby on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @10:29PM (#486670)

Newegg does that with the menus and sidebar and it pisses me off. I find the text uncomfortably small, but when I fix it their Javascript jams it back to a small size.

With high-res screens and/or people with vision trouble, setting a particular font size is generally a bad idea.

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Re:Why You Should Design Fixed-Width Websites by gojomo on Wednesday February 18, 2009 @11:16PM (#486720)

Good point; any such auto-sizing shouldn't override user zooms.

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