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Rigid

 Monday, 18 September 2000 About Nut July 2000 August 2000
September 2000
Style Layers
Rigid
Drum October 2000 November 2000
The internet is platform independant. A designer does not know the user's screen size.

So, I'm quite amazed to see professional designers designing pages with a fixed, rigid screen layout. My amazement is large as designing a liquid layout is easier, not more difficult than a fixed one. An example:

Rigid design

Recipe Description
Huanggua Jiaorou Minced beef with cucumber and ginger
Unknown title Minced beef with capsicum and bamboo

Liquid design

Recipe Description
Huanggua Jiaorou Minced beef with cucumber and ginger
Unknown title Minced beef with capsicums and bamboo
Please resize your browser window now. The table on the right hand side will adapt, the left one won't.

Just one quick look at the HTML source shows that the liquid solution has less HTML code.

Rigid HTML

<table width=250 border=5>
<tr>
<th width=80><Recipe>/th>
<th width=170><Descripton</th>
</tr>
...
</table>

Liquid HTML

<table border=5>
<tr>
<th><Recipe></th>
<th><Description</th>
</tr>
...
</table>
It's so simple. Just leave out the width= parameter, and the browser will use the available screen width optimally.

So, the mystery still exists. Why, o why, will professional designers make their pages so rigid? My personal impression is that designers mostly use WYSIWYG HTML editors, without any knowledge of HTML. WYSIWYG is nice, especially for text processing, but it's dead on the web.

However, the current generation of designers lack the knowledge to fully understand the underlying HTML. A width= parameter is unknown to them, so leaving it out is something unheard of. Shame, as anyone that learns a bit of HTML will be able to create pages that:

  • contain less code, downloading faster. Speed is the number one criterion for happy users (www.useit.com/...).
  • are liquid, use the advanced browser's rendering facilities in an optimal way.
  • look good on any browser.
So, I end with a bold thesis:
HTML editors like Dreamweaver (www.macromedia.com/...) are good enough
for personal homepages,
but a designer of professional sites
uses an advanced tool such as HomeSite (www.allaire/com/...).
Till next week!
Nut
With special thanks to Oba Ehiagwina for recommending me HomeSite.
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