Can I throw a thought or two about liquid into the mix here?
How does a liquid layout affect the relationship between elements on a page? Good information design creates relationships between elements based on their location relative to each other. In a liquid layout, these elements may become separated and the link is lost. Liquid designs require white space from somewhere, think carefully about where this is coming from.
Another thing to think about with regards to liquid layouts is line length of text. I believe that in the print world, a width of 39 ems is the preferred line length. It's easy to specify a width of 39 ems for a block of text by using CSS. So, the width in pixels changes as the user adjusts the font size but the line length remains at a good, readable length.
If we look at the typical user of a 1600 pixel wide screen we will usually find a designer or very technically savvy person sitting behind it. One could assume that these people will understand why a website appears as a small square in the upper left of their screen and would know how to fix that. Perhaps we (as designers) should be concentrating on hand-holding those people who are sitting in front of an 800x600 or 1024x768 display that has been set up for them. Cater for the people who don't understand the issues surrounding liquid design, high resolution monitors and web design in general.
Liquid design to me is not about stretching a design across the mximum width of a page but is about allowing flexibility in your design to cope with the user changing the font size.
So, if we look at this is the context of 'letterboxing' or 'postcarding' then perhaps it makes these two techniques easier to implement? Elements on the page require their spacial relationships to remain constant, users of huge monitors accept the cons of having a huge monitor and pixel-perfect layouts remain pixel perfect - unless the user is allowed to change the size of text.
auto centring of web sites or postcarding..?, Lucyf, 21 May 14:30 hello
has anyone heard of 'postcarding' it is when a web page automatically opens in the centre of the browser, regardless of the browser or size of screen?
I think it is als ...
Re: auto centring of web sites or postcarding..?, Alex Chudnovsky, 21 May 15:10 On 14:30:41 21 May 2004 Lucyf wrote:
>has anyone heard of 'postcarding' it is when a web page
>automatically opens in the centre of the browser,
>regardless of the browser or s ...
auto centring of web sites or postcarding..?, Stuart Curran, 24 May 12:39 Hi Lucyf
I think that this approach is usually employed for sites where a degree of "pixel perfect" design is required. Its common to find a lot of brochure sites for design com ...
"Letterbox" is the word I know, fjordaan , 24 May 14:29 ...but different designers will doubtless have their own terms.
Mostly I'd advise against it.
The main reasons why it is used are
1) Better knowledge of Photoshop than the w ...
"Letterbox" is the word I know, paulnattress, 25 May 16:17 Can I throw a thought or two about liquid into the mix here?
How does a liquid layout affect the relationship between elements on a page? Good information design creates relatio ...
"Letterbox" is the word I know, fjordaan , 27 May 18:14 I didn't mean to suggest that a liquid layout should always be used.
(Jargon guide: A liquid layout is where the content on the page always expands to the full width of the brow ...
auto centring of web sites or postcarding..?, Lucyf, 21 May 14:30
, 24 May 14:29 
