should websites expand on window resize?

Question

I'm asking this question purely from a usability standpoint: Should a website expand/stretch to fill the viewing area when you resize a browser window?

I know for sure there are the obvious cons:

• Wide columns of text are hard to read
• Writing html/css using percents can be a pain
• It makes you vulnerable to having your design stretched past it's limits if an image is too wide, or a block of text is added that is too long. (see it's a pain to code the html/css)

The only Pro I can think of is that users who use the font-resizing that is built into their browser won't have to deal with columns that are only a few words long, with a body of whitespace on either side. However, I think that may be a browser problem more than anything else (Firefox 3 allows you to zoom everything instead of just the text, which comes in handy all the time)

thanks for reading! =D

edit: I noticed stack overflow is fixed width, but coding horror resizes. It seems Jeff doesn't have a strong preference either way.

Answer 1

This is a matter of styling preference. Both can be equally usable depending on implementation. Columns can also be used, if the screen gets wide enough. Personally, I find it annoying when there is a single, narrow column of text going down the screen.

Answer 2

Raw HTML does just that. Are you changing your data so that it doesn't render so good in random sized windows?

In the olden days, everyone had VGA screens. Now, that resolution is most uncommon. Who knows what resolutions are going to be common in the future? And why expect a certain minimum width or height?

From a usability viewpoint, demanding a certain resolution from your users is just going to create a degraded experience for anyone not using that resolution. Another thing that comes from this is what is fixed width? I've seen plenty of fixed size windows (popups) that just don't render right because my fonts are different from the designer's.

Answer 3

I guess like a lot of things: it depends. I usually do both. Some content stays fixed width to look good or if it can't benefit form more space. other stuff is set to 100% if it seems like it'd be usefull.

Answer 4

In terms of web site scaling I like fixed sized web sites that scales nicely using the browsers "zoom" function. I don't want a really wide page with tiny fonts on my 1920 res monitor. I don't know if the web designer has to do anything to make it scale nicely when zoomed, but the zoom in FF3 is awesome, the one in IE7 is useless...

Answer 5

This should be decided on how complicated the design of your website is. The more complicated, graphically or component wise (amount of content divs), will determine how well your website will scale. Generally you will find most graphic designers website will not scale because they are graphically intensive. However informational website will scale to make the best use of readable space on the screen and are not complicated for ease of use. Its a matter of preference really.

Answer 6

I think it depends on the content of the site. Sites like SOFlow, Forums, and other sites have an emphasis on reading lots of details, so having more real estate to do so is a big benefit in my mind. The less vertical scroll, the better.

However, for sites a little less demanding on the reading level, even blogs or retail sites where you're simply displaying an individual product, having a fixed width allows you to keep things more concise.

Answer 7

The important thing is never to have a block of text stretch too wide. If a window is expanded, no block of text should indefinitely stretch to match because reading becomes a difficulty.

Answer 8

Like people have said, it really depends on what information the site is displaying. Two good examples are StackOverflow, and Google Images..

If stackoverflow stretched to fit the screen, longer answers would be annoying to read, because the eye finds it difficult to scan over long lines - this is exactly why newspapers use columns for everything, and why books are the all the same sort of width.

With Google Images, where the content is basically a bunch of 200px wide images, it stretches to fit the browser width and is still perfectly readable.

Basically, bear in mind the eye hates reading long lines of text, and base your design on that. You can design your site so when you increase the font size, all the layout scales nicely with it (The only site I can think of that does this is www.geektechnique.org - press the ctrl and -/= or ctrl+scrollwheel, and the layout changes width with the font size)

Answer 9

Note: if you use the zoom funtionality in your browser, a fixed layout squashes the text, whereas a fluid layout allows it to take up the whole screen.

Maybe this is just a browser problem, but it's definately an argument in favor of fluid

Answer 10

I have never been happy with a website resizing the browser window. That is up to the user to decide.

Answer 11

I'm a big fan of fully-fluid designs. As to the usability complaints about lines of text that are too long... if they're too long because of the size of my browser window, then I can just as easily make the window narrower as I can make it wider.

Answer 12

The design should be fluid within sensible bounds.

Use CSS has min-width and max-width properties (which work in every browser, including IE7+) to prevent design from stretching too much.

Answer 13

I'd say fluid all the way. The user can always go back to a smaller size window if he doesn't like the result of enlarging it, but he can't do anything about a fixed layout.

If you really, really hate the idea of your site looking ugly because of something a user with a large screen does, then for the sake of all that is true and beautiful, at least never use pixel-based fixed layouts! CSS has these neat text-relative size units like "em" that allow parts of your page to scale with the font size while others (like images) stay in their "natural" size.

Why not use them and make your page scale well without relying on the less flexible "scale everything" of FF3 that's really just a workaround for sites that use a dumb pixel-based fixed layout?

Answer 14

A lot of people are saying things like "this is a matter of taste" or "I don't like big fonts on my high-pixel display." Number of pixels has nothing to do with it, and it's not a matter of taste. It's a matter of DPI, which is directly related to display resolution and font size. If your layout scales along with the DPI of the fonts (by being specified in ems for instance, and using SVG), then you end up with very beautiful, very crisp websites that work optimally with any display.

http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/creating/anyresolution.html