Are fluid websites worth making anymore? [closed]

Question

I'm making a website now and I am trying to decide if I should make it fluid or not. Fixed width websites are much easier to make and also much easier to make them appear consistent.

To be honest though, I personally prefer looking at fluid websites that stretch to the full width of my monitor. My question comes from the fact that in most modern browsers you can hold control and scroll your mouse wheel to basically resize any website.

So is creating a fluid website worth the trouble?

Answer 1

Preface: Not a professional web artist.

I've found that there's way too many fiddly bits to get things to flow just so at cell-phone and uber-widescreen sizes, especially in anything of reasonably interesting complexity.

Typically, I design around having a fixed-width site in some fashion; usually bounded at [600,1200].

I also find super-wide columns of content to be a hassle to read. I seem to remember that there's some research which suggests an optimal number of words per column line.

Answer 2

Yes, fluid websites are worth creating
As you said, it looks good and reasonable when you plan properly at design phase.

Your doubt about the impact of Ctrl + Scrollbar is not a big deal. This feature is primarily for accessibility, to make text more readable by increasing the size.

However, if you mention all your sizes in Pixels (px) it won't happen. Proper adjustment happens only when you use "em" to specify size. So you have a way to turn it on/off

Answer 3

I'm a big fan of fixed at < 800px... it's easier to read narrower columns, and it will work anywhere. That is, if you're trying to make a website that presents hypertext... Websites which present application front-ends, are I think another can of worms entirely...

Answer 4

I think it's nice to be able to scale well on a user's screen, rather than make the users pan and zoom. In a time when users surf the web from such a wide variety of devices, ranging from smartphones to ultra-mobile PCs, each with its own, possibly non-standard resolution, I think it's important to keep user-experience at a high level when your site is viewed on such screens. Regarding the text length, it could be bounded by a certain ratio, so it would fit nicely within the layout. I think there are also frameworks that may help with writing a site in a fluid manner, and help with coding maintainability.

Answer 5

It depends on what you're trying to do. Take a look at SO. It's fixed width and it's great. In fact, if it were fluid, it would be a bit of a PITA. Some sites look better with fluid layouts, but personally, I'd go with fixed unless you have a good reason to go fluid.

Answer 6

I think the decision fluid/fixed should be based also on content of the website:

1. For sites with big amounts of plain information (like news portals), better to use fluid layout.

2. Web-services better look and work in fixed dimensions, so you always know where interface elements are located in their places and they are not moving around constantly.