Has anyone had any success in creating a liquid layout? In my opinion, websites using a liquid layout look so much more professional than ones using a fixed layout. Just wondering if the guys from BV have this on their to do list? (it would be a great Chistmas present for us! :smilewinkgrin: It would be nice to have a liquid layout theme to start out as a baseline when modifying a canned theme.

I agree they are a headache to get to work 100%. But ... you are seeing more and more of them on the web, esspecially the newer(or revised) websites. It seems like the way to go.

I did my companys website using a liquid layout and I was pulling my hair out tweaking the CSS to get it to work. There was a time where is I was considering to scrap the liquid design and go back to a fixed width. However my company website is no where near as complicated as a BV store website, so I am reluct to start tweaking any of the canned BV themes.

Interesting point you made about websites going to wider fixed widths. I was not aware of that. That may be a good alternative to using Liquid layouts.

It definitely allows more control, and I think it is going a long way toward the acceptance that most people are not on 800 x 600 any more. :)

marcus - what source are the stats you are citing?

http://www.w3schools.com...wsers/browsers_stats.asp
see right above the comment: Web developers be aware: Many users still have only 800x600 display screens.

17% at 800x600

The screen resolution is dependent upon the audience of the website. I've been building new designs that render at 800x600 and expand out to 1024x768.
I have started feeding smaller thumbnails to 800x600 users so I can keep a more consistant look across screen resolutions.

at my desk, I run 1024x768 on 2/3 screens. The third screen runs 1600x1200 (one of my laptop screens while docked) dragging documents from one screen into another with a different resolution sometimes is a pain - but I am too cheap to buy additonal monitors right now. Also, there are some things that prefer to do at 1600x1200.

colors and brightness/contrast are grossly different between screens. for example - on Viewsonic panel with stock settings - the box around the top 2 google sponsored link appearing directly above the natural listings is not visible. I keep this as a preset as it allows me to consider a wider audience.

Regardless, a 100% liquid layout is poor choice IMO. amazon looks poor/broken at 1600x1200 and it is doing much better than any other site I can reference.
It confuses most users. Some sites, like ESPN, forbes - have been adding a third right columns that is supplementary content. The 800x600 folks scroll to the right to see. I doubt many forbes.com users are running 800x600 but I bet a lot of 800x600 users are on ebay and walmart.com. It is my opinion that one of the fastest ways to lose a user is to make him scroll left to right. As you visit friends and family over the holidays - glance at their equipment. Note the ugly old CRT monitors and Aunt Sally's wonderful AT style keyboard.

As no two users are alike, ideal is to let the user decide. If you got enough content to fill out 1600x1200 with design, all I can say is wow..... For me, laying out 1280x1024 seems hard to pull off in Photoshop. If in doubt, make tally marks on post it for number of sites you visit versus those that are 100% liquid. Let us know what you come up with.

Scott Mech

I can top you guys. We are going to out of state this Thanksgiving to visit my wife's mom. She uses MSN WebTV. Cant wait to see what my websites look like on that!!! Ouch!

LOL...the best stats I go by are the ones for each particular website.

LMAO!!!!

feedback from some of our clients show between 14% and 32% using less than 1024.

Scott,

I don't remember where I got that stat from but our own bvsoftware.com site is less than 5% below 1024. As far as I know Vista requires a computer capable of 1024x768 and is set that way by default. Maybe it can run 800x600 but it isn't the default.