To center or not To Center
It seems like there are two points of view on building a web page. One is to align the page to the left margin. The other is to center it in the page. I am kind of leaning towards the centering camp right now. It seems like some of the more 'artsy' sites that I have seen always center while most e-commerce sites left align. Anyone else have any thoughts on this.
Mark Irving
I have a mind like a steel trap; it is rusty and illegal in 47 states
Megan posted this at 15:04 — 8th March 2001.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
You mean centering the layout? I think that's definitely the way to go. When you have a large resolution sites look pretty stupid jammed up against the left margin.
Of course, my prefered method is to use a flexible design (which can be a problem for people with *really* big resolutions but with the sites I do those are few and far between).
Megan
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mairving posted this at 15:31 — 8th March 2001.
They have: 2,256 posts
Joined: Feb 2001
What do you mean by flexible design?
Something like or
.
Megan posted this at 18:19 — 8th March 2001.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
I mean width=100%.
Beanboy posted this at 18:35 — 8th March 2001.
They have: 30 posts
Joined: Mar 2001
The benefit of centering is nice when high resolution comes into play, but having it set to the left gives a good anchoring point for the eye, also lets you have a dark color sidebar without making the user feel like he or she is trapped.
As for setting width to a %, for some tech or news heavy sites where getting as much information onto the page with minimal load time is the top priority, I like it. For other sites, the white space control and ability to top the page off with a full-width graphic by setting a pixel width becomes more of an issue.
-Beanboy
mjames posted this at 23:03 — 8th March 2001.
They have: 2,064 posts
Joined: Dec 1999
I thought I'd add that when I launched my new design back in August of last year, it was only 650 pixels wide and didn't look good aligned all the way to the left in high resolutions. So, we decided to center it and it looks best that way.
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