From the course: Accessibility for Web Design
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Flexible vs. fixed width designs
From the course: Accessibility for Web Design
Flexible vs. fixed width designs
- Which resolution do we design for? In the early days of the web, it was 640 x 480. Then, when our analytics showed us the dominant screen resolution was 800 x 600, we rejoiced and quickly moved to making all our designs fit that 800 x 600 screen. We did the same when we jumped to 1024 x 768. Many people moved from designing for print to designing for the web, and they naturally created fixed width, pixel perfect designs, just like it was being output on paper. It didn't have to be that way, though. Even in the early days of web design, we could design things that had flexibility built into them. Rather than confining things to a fixed number of pixels, we could use percent units for specifying widths. In fact, there was a many years long debate between designers about fixed versus flexible width designs. That's hard to believe now. When we ask the same question today, which resolution do we design for, the only answer…
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