[justenough]

Hi all,

I am designing a city portal site. The page will be centered and have a left column width of 220. I trying to decide how big to make the right column. Some of the larger content that will go in the right column will be things like maps, articles, events poster/flyer images, search results grids, and forums. I already have the page at a width of 798 but that looks a little small. What does everyone think?

[D856C]

Many designers have switched to 1024 and others use liquid design -- even when there are fixed width elements.

When I say "optimize" I mean that your page should look and work the best at the most common size. It should still look good and work well at other sizes, which is why I recommend a liquid layout. But it should be its best at 1024x768.
--Screen Resolution and Page Layout; Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox

[pgo]

From an accessibility standpoint, variable width is going to be your best bet.

However, if you must go with fixed width, I'd still stick to 800x600. Of course, if you're doing a city portal for any sort of government agency, you'll need to follow Section 508 if you're in the US.

[justenough]

What do you mean by variable width?

[Larixk]

Elements width set in a percentage of the browser window's width, to allow scaling.

[Keenen]

Somethis like this

http://www.taylorsprint.com/css/

[justenough]

so why is this my best bet from an accessibility standpoint

[Keenen]

Lots of different screen sizes now.

[justenough]

So would the left column be 220 and the right column stretch to fit the rest of the screen? And can I still have the page centered

[Keenen]

That is correct

[Keenen]

Don't know if this'll help you visulize it

http://www.taylorsprint.com/css/css/basic.css

[justenough]

Thanks Keenen for all your help. A couple of last things: what css techniues should i look for to help me with this and is there any css sites that might be able to help me. Thanks again

[Keenen]

Google variable width css layouts there's also some helpful tools here you might want to look at

http://www.soxiam.com/Notes/CSSTools

[Keenen]

3 coloum fluid here http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/3cols.asp

This was the one I was looking for more variety here http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/

[skyrocket]

Originally Posted by justenough

I already have the page at a width of 798 but that looks a little small. What does everyone think?

What resolution are you running? It may look small on your system but for folks still using 800x600 and maybe on a 14" or 15" screen it will fill the screen and may even flow off the right side and you'll get the dreaded horizontal scrollbar of doom.