I don't understand why Theme developers and Module developers set the width to a specific size like '900px' why don't they use '100%' or '99%'. To me this is just plain wrong.

I think everyone that looks at a web page should see the exact same thing no matter what their screen resolution is. It is bad enough that each browser looks different, Why should each screen resolution be different also?

My main live site looks the same no matter what browser you use or what screen resolution (not sure about Mac browser, never saw my site with one, but no one ever complained). It wasn't the easiest thing I ever did but to me It has to be that way. I like consistancy.

Look how many people complain about the differences between I.E. and Mozilla.

This is not a flaming post and I hope it doesn't turn into one, I appreciate everything everyone here does, I just don't understand this.
Does anyone feel the same or am I just being anal?

Are there any GOOD reasons people code like this?

That's my 2 cents,
John

some times things look crap or just can't be done as wanted on small screens..

my width is 990px and thats because my site is optimized for 1024x768 res.

and quite frankly if i made it dynamic (100%) it would look totally crap viewed at 800x600 etc.. and at a larger resolution if it was 100% then the image header would repeat itself or not fill the whole screen or it would expand and look awful.. and to get round that i'd have to make tile images which i don't want to do so i make my theme a fixed width.. also have you viewed a message forum at 800 resolution with a 3 column site? everything is squashed up and looks totally awful.

in my opinion fixed width themes tend to look better, and more professional as u can design for the specific screen area etc etc, there's lots of reasons y others do it too.

is it wrong? no i don't think it's wrong.

if the person is viewing on a smaller screen then that's what they should expect, the highest percentage of users worldwide these days are using 1024x768..

I understand what you are saying, under certain situations you are probably right. I don't think you should exclude the 14% or so who use 800 X 600 resolution or the 25% or so that use a higher resolution.

When I go to a site and have to scroll sideways, if I even notice it (most of the time I will), unless I am there for something special, I will just go somewhere else and be pissed that they made it one way, and I know the difference. Most people using the Internet don't know the difference, so they just think the site was designed poorly, or worse yet don't even see part of your site.

Then the other end, I don't want to see a site with 2 or 3 inches of nothing on each side. To me that is unprofessional looking. We must remember that most people coming to our sites in most cases don't know much about how things work, they just notice how they look. I basically hate to scroll sideways or see my screen not being totally used, thats why I think everything should be designed to be universal, even if it means changing the content to fit right.

Just my thoughts, I do see what you are saying, I guess it depends on who you want visiting your site, I want everyone, I don't care what they use to get there, I feel that with a fixed width site you are telling many people you don't care what they think, same with the mozilla thing, many sites I go to look like crap because I use mozilla and the webmaster doesn't care or know how their site looks to me. So I stay away from those sites.

Just something to think about

John

give people a choice of narrow or wide themes... then it saves the problems

maybe there might be a better way of managing it in future.. a way to check the browser size and then an html/xhtml function that could call different templates etc without having to use javascript etc.. i did try using javascript to do it a while back but it does make a noticable difference on speed, especially for 56k users..

in netscape and firefox browsers etc and i think mozilla you can use the max-width: 1000px; command in the CSS and that will limit the browser to that max width.. unfortunately IE doesn't support it..

I have multiple themes on my site. Some use a fixed width layout and others a variable width layout. I develop all of my themes so they are at least usable in 800x600 without any distracting flaws. I target 1024x768 though. Anything less than 800x600 and the layout begins to break down.

As far as fixed width layouts are concerned, there are many reason why you would want to do this. A few include:

1) Fixed width is easier to design for.

2) Variable width layouts can become difficult to read on exceptionally large (or small) resolutions.

3) Browsers handle the box model differently. Sort of goes along with point number 1.

Ultimately, both have their merits and demerits. I try to target an average resolution while making the page usable in higher and lower resolutions.

Mark