Have fixed width layouts won?

[Jackolantern]

I have normally not paid much attention to web page design until recently. However, I still keeping seeing tons of documentation about fixed width vs. flexible/fluid layouts. By all of those texts, this sounds like it is still a hotly debated topic and a major design decision. But I am having a hard time finding even one fluid layout on a major website. It almost seems as though they have gone the way of elastic layouts. Do people still use them regularly, or at all? Are they even a consideration anymore, considering that many people have widescreen monitors that can make them look horrible?

[Chris]

I hate resize able layouts, I have a 22 inch wide screen monitor and it sucks constantly having to move my head to look at stuff, If I look up a website I want to be able to read everything in front of me by only moving my eyes.

I find it's still best to stick to a width of 960px, although by the looks of the statistics it wont be long outdated.

[Jackolantern]

I hear you, and thanks for the feedback! I honestly could not figure out how to make a layout work well on both a 17" standard monitor and a 24" widescreen without fixed widths. With fluid layouts you will have a sea of unused space somewhere on larger displays.

[Xen]

Well I studied fixed vs. fluid layouts when designing my site and tried both, but ultimately went with a fixed width layout. I did use a fixed-fluid-fixed layout for a while, but that soon went out the window.
Here's a short article that seems to confirm that fluid layouts have had their day. As you can see by the list, nearly all the major companies have fixed widths on their websites now. Interesting to see what widths they use too.
http://www.thechoppr.com/blog/2009/02/2 ... on-trends/

I have been using a 966px width on my site, just an easy divisible number, but I am considering increasing that as about 20px each side are just a border anyway. I guess I will wait until I have a variety of users looking at it with different resolutions and then decide from there.
But it's fixed all the way for me

[Jackolantern]

Yeah, I could hardly find a single fluid layout on any commercial website . I think they really have had their day.

[Falken]

I am using a dynamic width on my website gamedatabase.eu

But it is all about what type of content you want to display and the rest of the design.
For example my site looks ok on most screen sizes over 800px width. That kind of site would look quite weird if it was limited in width on big screens.

Also on blogs and other sites where you just post long text messages it fits quite good with dynamic width. While on for example a newspapers homepage where the headlines and images need to stay in place a fixed width will probably look better.

So in the end it is just about what your site is about and how the content suffers/gains from a dynamic width. So I don't think you can really say that either fixed or dynamic width is dead, they both got their own purposes

[Xen]

I agree that they both have their own purposes for the reasons you stated. And I would be inclined to use fluid columns if needed, especially for huge amounts of text, but it would be within a fixed framework and not an entire fluid layout.
But that's just how I want my site to look....which proves that as well as content, it's also down to personal preference of the developer.

[Noctrine]

Only one I can think of offhand is deviantart art. I experimented with a fluid thing for Indiepoint awhile back (friend still wants me to do that one instead) but there is just so much to take account of and what not its all quite irritating. Its a lot easier to just lock the width at something and be certain that it will display the correct way as long as anyone looks at it.

Now for the web applications that I make for myself and various others, I almost always go with a fluid width. So that it can scale from mobile to web. Though I often find myself setting a max-height.

[hallsofvallhalla]

fixed width for the win!!!

[Jackolantern]

I think people are getting so used to fixed width since it is on basically every site that they are getting "browser tunnel vision". Even on narrow fixed width sites, I hardly ever notice the wasted space on the sides. Kind of like watching a letterbox movie. At first it seems kind of annoying, but then you just forget that you are watching one and forget all about the black bars