Fixed Grid vs Fluid Grid - Which layout option should I choose?

Hi Dave!

I always use a fluid layout when possible. Maybe it just boils down to a personal preference. I think a lot of sites use fixed because they think it will make their site compatible with all screen formats. And technically, depending on the size, that's true. But when someone develops for, say 1024x768, and use fixed, then only the folks who use that screen size will benefit from the look of a full layout. But when someone like me, who use a 1280 screen size views it, it's not full. So then we're left with a lot more blank space. This is the exact reason why I always use fluid... so that no matter what screen size someone has, it will fill the screen. I still come across SO many sites and blogs using something like a 800 width fixed layout. Jeez I hate that! What I see on my 1280 screen is this tiny little center column of content with more blank space than content space. It's a pet-peeve with me, I guess.

So yeah, you're partially correct: It's "can" let you get more content in there. But the real reason for fluid is so that it looks nice across multiple screens. Actually, what I do is modify my layout. Like in Prosper (which I use often), instead of 100%, I'll use something like 95%... because I sometimes use a background image. It's up to you, but I'd go with fluid. Most large sites like Youtube, Facebook and Microsoft use fluid. I think it's just part of the Web 2.0 (or soon to be 3.0) type of style. Overall, to me, it just looks better. Nobody uses 800x600 resolution anymore. 1024x768 is still the most popular size, but like 1280 and 1440 I think are really popular too.

If you have CPanel with your web host, you can go into "Awstats" and look at the resolution that your visitors are using. This will give you a good idea of where to target your resolution size. But what I do, to stay on the safe side, it to optimize for 1024x768 using fluid.

Advantages:
It will fill the screen at all sizes... down to a point.
You can't technically get more content in there, but more content will appear on the screen, of course.
More modern look and feel.

Disadvantages:
The only disadvantages I found so far is with videos. When adding them, you have to pay closer attention to the size of the video itself. Too big and your right sidebar will overlap your video. Too small and things start to not look right on larger screens.
I guess using fluid takes a bit more work to ensure everything fits properly if using a custom or hacked theme.

Hope this gives some insight.

Best of luck to ya!
Chris

I used to be 100% in agreement with Chris, but then I got a large monitor and looked at my stats and saw how many of my visitors have resolutions at or above 1500px wide.

If you choose to have an essentially stable layout with the content section expanding to available space, you'll get line lengths way beyond 35em, which is considered a good rule of thumb to keep text readable. You would use smaller numbers for text for children, larger numbers for technical works with "advanced" reader, but for a normal adult reader, 35em is a good rule of thumb that generally will end up being about 70 characters.

So now I use fixed layouts so that users with large monitors don't have to resize. In fact, it drives me crazy to go to sites with fluid layouts and be forced to resize my browser window in order to render it readable.

There are options that I think are better than fixed or fluid - google on Switchy Mclayout and look for an article on A List Apart. Essentially, the idea is that you create 4-5 layouts and you switch as a step function. So if someone is on an iPhone, they might get a one-column layout with skip navigation, someone on a standard laptop (1024 or 1280) might get a two column layout and people on large monitors would get a three or even four column layout (though I think 4-col only works if one of the columns is ads or something).

So I used to be a "fluid all the way" and considered it a fundamental best practice. Now I think fixed is better, but step-limited fixed or semi-fluid is best if you have the time and design resources for it.

heh heh.... yeah, no easy answers on this one.

I suppose if you had a lot of time and energy and money, you would churn out a few different designs - fluid, fixed at various sizes, stepwise - and run usability tests and then maybe some A/B split-testing and find out which layouts tend to end up with the highest number of page views, longest time on site, lowest bounce rate. Then you'd have your answer.

Of course, I can't personally see myself ever having the time and money to do that on the sites I build, but one can have one's fantasies.

hi just curious i could not see anywhere with switchyMclayout what to actually set the layout to fluid ? or fixed ? thanks for any help