Why almost all themes have fixed width?

There’s a reason books and magazines have evolved into what they are today. The classic layout has been tried and tested, and there definately are reasons, why the standard size paper is today’s standard. Don’t quote me on the sources or the numbers, I learned this a while ago.

I have yet to see a fluid width site that appeals to my eye. It utilizes the browser window in an optimal way, but it sure ain’t pretty!

The classic layout has been tried and tested, and there definately are reasons, why the standard size paper is today’s standard.

And which standard paper size would that be, exactly?

I get several magazines and not one of them is the same size as any other. And newspapers are frequently different sizes as well.

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It’s not about the actual size, it’s the width:height aspect ratio that’s important.

As to your different sized magazines: I bet it’s only few mm that make them different. Unless you have some artsy fartsy design mags that try to be different and unique, you’ll most definately be somewhere in the A4 area.

Then again, I can immagine a site with a fixed left and/or right column and a flexible content area that sports magazine/newspaper sized colums and the wider the page the more columns you have. If you’re thinking of something like that, you definately have my support. But a.f.a.i.k. the columns thing is only available in future CSS definitions.

I’m not a designer, so it was hard for me to make a fluid layout.

So, I decided instead of this switch style when window width is more than 1230 pixels. I took Digg-3-Columns theme and highly modified it. That is what I have got: https://iproc.ru/interesting/hydro-history/ (try resising window above and below 1230 pixels width).

I thought that style switching is my original idea, but later I found this: https://www.alistapart.com/articles/switchymclayout
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LOL, designers are supposed to make things look nice. Fixed width looks nice. It is considered desirable. Fluid layout designs have a tendency to be ugly. Yes, you can scale a background image with 100% width and height but then you’ll end up squishing (tweaking the proper proportions) it as well… the horrific diabolical taboo of design. It’s just the sure sign of an amateur. My graphic design professors in collage nagged and harped “NEVER SQUISH OR STRETCH AN IMAGE OR FONT!” And they were right. It’s repulsive.

Fluid design can be very impressive. I don’t think it’s fair to say designers are lazy because they make a qualified design decision to compliment the needs of their design. There is nothing inherently wrong with fixed width.

No one is “lazy” because their priority of aesthetic vs. mechanism is different than yours. Seems silly to be angry and insulting about something that is so subjective anyway.

Why put any thought into visual flow, conceptual positioning, or proper image and text proportions when you can just plop it all in, tell it to stretch to fit, and attribute the resulting hideousness to the “superior design of fluid layout?”

Bleh.

Hello there. I’m precisely thinking a lot about fluid or fixed design.

Simple facts : a fluid design can adapt to screen resolutions, wich is good. I’ve made a lot of fluid wordpress templates : https://blog.thomascook.fr/demo/en/themes-wordpress/

Those are all fluid, like my own LiquiCard. But this one will stretch until a certain point. It will limit his stretching : not greater than X pixels.

The huge advantage of fixed width is the simplicity to add pictures in blog posts. Today, with some pictures in float left in an article, I will have an ugly article, with ugly text, if the design was fluid. If everything was fixed, it will be really easy to put images in a post.