Mark Barnes - 1

I quite like the fixed width here. Somehow the default design looks more professional then.

Fixed width drives me up the wall...

It's definitely a matter of taste -- rather than "more professional", I tend to think "wordpress template out of the box" on first sight (no offense to Mark, of course! But it's definitely a look.). And the lack of resizability makes me insane...

I've never had my own thread before ;-) I feel I ought to reply!

It is a matter of taste. For what it's worth, full width drives me up the wall. Perhaps that's because I have a wide monitor, and if you watched me reading Librarything.com you'd think I was watching a tennis match.

I do agree that that my (as yet unfinished) design isn't looking great yet. I'm afraid it probably never will, because of the way the site has been constructed. Changing colours, etc. is easy. Changing layout is much harder because of the limitations on what we can change, and the fact that there is a lot of tables-based layout and lack of sufficient css classes.

The bottom line is that (understandably) as the site has evolved, bits have been tacked on, and the design has been done "to work" rather than to be flexible. It would be wonderful if Tim could change this. I've made a few suggestions on another thread about how this could be done (even without getting rid of the tables). This would make a designers job much easier.

Having said that, this is a unique experience amongst all the websites I'm a member of, and I'm enjoying tweaking.

#4

Why do you have your browser maximised (or at least as far as width goes) then?

I hate fixed width layouts.

>5 andyl: I guess simply because I would view that as "messy". I don't want my wallpaper, random word document, or whatever happens to be behind my browser to distract me. If I'm using LT, that's my focus. I don't want (or need) to see anything else. Unless I'm genuinely working on two apps at the same time, everything I do is always maximised. And if I am working on two apps, I'll likely have them on a dual monitor setup. We're all different, I guess.

So, I appreciate the input, I really do. There are a few things I will never do, however. One is moving from names to those rectangular profile pictures. (Showing profile pictures here and there, particularly for known people is something I'd consider.) Another is allowing animated signatures in Talk. And another is fixed-width layout.

I see them as a crutch of pre-web graphic designers, who want to be able to place every blessed pixel as they would on paper, and are afraid of fluidity because it spoils "their" design.

This is, however, a "religious" discussion—in the Krug sense. It's impossible to discuss on many different levels. It's a matter of taste and of fixed habit.

But I know myself well enough to know that it's not going to happen.

Now, maybe what some like about fixed width has other significance. Maybe I design for the wrong average size screen—and many members are finding their eye spread too thin across the page. Maybe—probably—we need to look more "professional" (a word I hate). Maybe other things. But the core issue won't be changing.

Thanks and sorry. :)

Tim, would we be able to use a fixed-width design if we wanted to? Like Mark's, but it wouldn't be the site default? Or are you saying that it somehow won't / can't be supported as an option?

I'm not a big fan of fixed width; I'm just curious about the planned support for user-created css.

BTW, super cool idea to open this up to users.

My current plan is not to "support" it. I'm thinking of this as a way for us and users to test out designs. The idea of "supporting" a dozen user-created CSS styles terrifies me. (And yes, it would be easier if LT's design was more regular, but organic growth is the way it's going to be.)

>7 timspalding: & 9

I won't get into an religious argument! But if you were at least able to put the page name as a class in BODY, that would really help designers.

You're right about that. Not trivial to add it after the fact, though.