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In this question, it is said in the most upvoted answer:

Use liquid layouts

Why this is considered a good practice ? My opinion is that it is more difficult to dezign a liquid layouts because it can vary quite a bit from one window size to another... Is the extra complexity worth it ? What i should take into account to make the choice ?

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Benjamin Crouzier
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Hmm, I disagree with that. With a fixed-width layout you can create something which will be viewed the same on all browsers.

I've been in web design and development for quite a while now and there have been very few times I've ever used liquid layouts on a website.

There are some times when it can come in useful, web apps sometimes can benefit from having a liquid layout. However, the safest (in terms of design and everything working across different browsers, screens etc), best looking (in my opinion) and "standard" way to create websites is with a fixed width.

Just look around. See the websites which have a liquid layout and ask yourself why they have a liquid layout. Do they have a lot of areas of dynamic/varying text for instance? Lots of information to show? Lack of visual/graphical design? Its a very subjective area, but one which you'll have to choose between. Does your website look better fixed or liquid? Do you want people with huge monitors (like me - 27" imac) to have to see your website really fat? I hate viewing amazon on my mac!

Thomas Clayson
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    mail.google.com, news.google.fr, www.google.com, amazon.com, wikipedia.com... They are quite a few – Benjamin Crouzier Aug 30 '11 at 12:42
  • -1 Not only most websites have fixed layouts, but have also sloppy UI, with terrifying old spaghetti code mash-up. The truth is that those websites are OLD and should be rewritten entirely from scratch. – Jose Faeti Aug 30 '11 at 12:51
  • @pinouchon I would call mail.google.com a web app, dunno about the news website, google.com is fixed width, amazon.com looks atrocious imo. Wikipedia has a lot of content textual content and therefore falls under "times when it can be useful". So out of your list there are 2 that are 'viable' for your argument, even then its only a list of 5. – Thomas Clayson Aug 30 '11 at 13:08
  • @jose that wasn't the question. the question was which one he should choose. My answer was largely objective based on personal experience (as noted in the answer). No need to -1. – Thomas Clayson Aug 30 '11 at 13:12
  • @Thomas: You're right, sorry for that. What I didn't like was "Just look around, how many websites nowadays have a liquid layout?". Seems like nobody uses a liquid layout cause it's somewhat a bad thing, or that if nobody uses it then it means it's not good, but of course your answer state otherwise. If you edit something I will be able to give back the vote. – Jose Faeti Aug 30 '11 at 13:25
  • @jose - fair enough. I've edited the quote you pointed out to clarify and maybe give a bit more advice to the OP. :) – Thomas Clayson Aug 30 '11 at 13:41
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Personnaly I find liquid layouts are always harder to work with, but they look nicer when it is nicely designed.

You can take a look at some grid css frameworks that can help you working with liquid layout.

Charles Ouellet
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The right choice depend on what are your needs.

Liquid layouts are perhaps more difficult to understand and implement, but you gain flexibility.

A flexibile layout means it can easily adapt to different screen resolutions.

Once you have your liquid layout done, you can possibly adapt it also for mobile websites (if it isn't already) with a couple of changes, mainly CSS rules.

With the fast pace at which new technologies come out (new devices, new screens, new resolutions, 16:9, 16:10, Full HD etc), you can easily implement a layout which has no problem displaying at various resolutions on different displays.

This is what liquid layouts are for.

On the other hand, a static website is nothing more than what we've seen in the past years, like a centered 960px wide page, unable to being displayed on most mobiles, and even if they display it, good luck navigating the website.

Note that you can actually implement a sort of hybrid: a fixed size layout, with a max width of let's say 960px to be viewable in desktop browsers normally, which then adapt to lower resolution with an auto width.

Jose Faeti
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