using px or %

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

i wanted to use % for things on my website
that way whatever users resolution/screen size was, the site would stretch to their full screen

from reading here and other places i find that isnt the way to go
and have tested my site on different screen sizes and resolutions and havent yet managed to get it working across the board with %

so my question is
do i (currently) write for a 17" monitor for the px sizes?
I would obviously centre the whole page in the middle, i hate going to a site where its been made for a smaller res than mine and its all in the top left hand corner with a huge white space to the right

is this centering done better with tables
or is there a neat full page centering code for css

also, i have a menu navigation to the left of my page, when i use tables, the header on the text to the right of this nav menu stays centered to the whole page

when i use css to center my text header, it includes the left nav menu and consequently pushes the text header off centre to the right (by the width of the nav menu)

thanks

(EDIT because i can't spell)

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

If you want us to look at a certain page please do provide a link. That makes it a lot easier to help you!

I have answered the question about centering a page design here:

http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?t=38127

Whether to go full width (flexible) or fixed width is often a matter of personal preference. Users and developers both have their preferences and reasons why one way is better than another. I think the best thing to do is make the decision on a case-by-case basis depending on the site. I find that sites with a lot of information on the page benefit from a flexible design because then the content has a bit more room to breathe. Sites with less information are better as fixed designs because then the content doesn't get spread all over the place with too much empty space.

I also frequently use the max-width property in CSS to prevent the page from expanding too much. So users at smaller resolutions see it at full width, but when the screen size gets larger the design becomes fixed width. You can see that in action here:

http://www.meganmcdermott.com/

Designing flexible layouts can be difficult at first. It may be easier to do something fixed width as you're learning and then work on doing flexible designs later.

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

You might also want to consider looking at some free css templates to see how it's done.

http://www.free-css-templates.com/free-templates.html

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