If you haven’t notice this, I’ve change the theme for my blog again, only this time featuring a web 2.0 color feel with some Web 2.0 features in it. I’ve modified the theme from Web 2.0 Themes where I changed the slideshow div element into my header element.
Also, you will realize that I used a fixed width theme right now, as opposed to the fluid width theme before. You might ask why is it so? I’ll answer you, “Why isn’t it so?”
Fixed versus Fluid width
Fixed width themes and fluid width themes differ between each other in a few aspects. First off, fluid width tends to stretch the web page to fit just nicely into any browser size you are using (think screen resolution). If you have a small size of your screen utilized for your browser, you will see that things like contents will be collapsed down line by line without breaking some elements, like sidebars. Fluid width themes use percentage to limit an element from the other. Therefore a browser has a 100% size, and part of it will be allocated for sidebar, while the other part will be allocated for contents, etc, etc.
Fixed width themes however tend to fix the size of the usable area for displaying content in your browser size that you allocated. It sets specific size an element can be stretch within the whole browser. This is done by limiting the pixels of a big div element, or using similar techniques.
So why not fluid? It displays things that suit to the users isn’t it?
True, fluid width themes displays nicely in any size, but let’s not forget some facts.
- Majority of internet users are using 1024*768 resolution screen size
- Wide screen monitor is not widely used as of now
- Not everything in your web page can be placed nicely in a fluid theme
Without going much into details, a fixed width theme which sets a maximum width of the contents to a size of around 900 pixels and above is definitely displaying it nicely in a browser resolution size of 1024*768. As for resolutions above 1024*768, you can still display it nicely provided the webmaster has already centerize the whole element.
Wide screen monitors are just an eye candy which everyone would love to use to watch High Definition movies, DVD etc. However, displaying a fluid theme in wide screen monitor has a totally different experience than displaying it in normal CRT monitors. In wide screen monitors, contents will be stretched to the max and you might not felt it to be too cluttered, but once you change the web page to be viewed in a CRT monitor, you will see many oddities in your web page layout which makes reading your web page an eyesore. Let’s face this fact right now, wide screen is becoming popular, but it isn’t what the majority of internet users are using right now.
For a blog, you will be using at least one widget out there, and don’t forget that these widgets do not come in fluid sizes which will stretch nicely according to your specified column. Specifying a fluid width to a sidebar, or more sidebar, can be a nightmare for your web page viewers if they are on a resolution which is totally from you, the web master’s, resolution. Your monitor might be big enough where a 11% of browser size can fit a 175pixel of Blogrush widget, but it might not be enough for your viewer’s small monitor size.
Simplicity’s sake
Therefore, for simplicity’s sake, I’m sticking with a fixed width theme for now. In fact, I’ve converted 7hirst dot Com’s theme from a 2 column fluid width theme to a 3 column fixed width theme. Things like people complaining web pages are not showing up nicely in their big monitors will not be happening in at least 3 years time, so I’ll stick with this for now and everyone can view it nicely while I’m getting one problem solve with web site layout.
