Fixed or Expanding Width Website? Which Is Best?

One of the major choices to be made before you have your website designed and then built is whether to have it built so that the width of the site is a specific fixed width, or whether it is going to expand to fit the width of whichever browser window is viewing it.

Indeed one of the first questions you may be asked when working with a web developer (person who builds the site) is, do you want fixed or expanding width website? Or they may have a recommendation and rationale for you as to which method they feel is ideal for your business.

What is expanding?
Expanding width is also sometimes referred to as fluid width. The difference between fixed and expanding layout is quite simple, it means whether you web page stretches when the width of the browser window changes or whether is stays fixed at a specific width.

The width of a fluid or expanding website is determined by the resolution you have your monitor set at and how large your browser window is the website width literally expands to fit the width of the visitors browser window, whatever that may be.

A good example of a fluid website is www.amazon.co.uk.

What is fixed?
Fixed websites have a certain number of pixels that determines the width of the site (without getting too technical, the web pages you see on your computer screen are made up of thousands of pixels in rows and columns).We are seeing more and more websites with a fixed width of recent years.

Typically web developers building a fixed width website tend to create these at around 1000 pixels wide as research tells us that the majority of Internet visitors will have their screen resolution set at this width or larger, and thus not going larger than in pixel width this assures that no (or barely any) users will have to scroll horizontally to view your website.

Horizontal scrolling is to be avoided, as it is well known to cause visitors to leave your website before it even has to a chance to sell its product or service to them.

An example of a fixed width website is www.theguardian.co.uk

Is A Fixed Website For Me?
The best thing about fixed width sites is they look the same to every visitor, this allows you to retain full control of how your website appears to the world. Control over your appearance is quite important in terms of your brand image.

However, if you have visitors to your site who have their monitor or browser settings set up in a certain way (at less than a 1024pixel width) they will be forced to scroll across to read all of your content. This is not likely to become an issue however if you stay inside of 1024 pixels wide when the site is built. Statistics show that the vast majority of users have their resolutions set this high at least and many with a much larger width.

If the visitor has their settings very much larger than your websites maximum width, the result can be a design which has distinct empty areas on each side of the website. These can however be filled with colour that match your website scheme, and even patterned backgrounds.

Is An Expanding Width For Me?
The main advantage of using expanding (or fluid) width is that they will expand to any monitor size and are often cited as more usable and accessible as they change to accommodate the website visitors monitor and settings.

However; you are left with limited control over the way your site looks to each visitor as you have less control over the positioning of images (photos or graphics) within the site content. This is not ideal from a brand perspective and could even be deemed as less usable.

Depending on the size of monitor your visitors are using (i.e. those with very wide screen resolutions) they could be facing very horizontally long lines of text to read from left right and this is not user friendly at all.

The Future?
Advances in web design and build have led to a third option which is elastic. Elastic is a mixture of fixed and expanding width. It allows the user to stay in control but you set certain parameters such as a minimum and maximum width. As mentioned however, we are finding more and more websites opting to fix their width of recent years.

Deciding which is best for you
Choosing the right width for you depends on what you want your site to do and the elements that it may contain within it.

If you are going to have a website with lots of images that you want to stay in specific places then you should probably go with a fixed width layout. A fixed width may also be for companies that are very concerned about their visual image and want to ensure that each visitor has a consistent view of the website in front of them.

If the textual content is most important, such as is the case with a search engine for instance, to avoid excesses of vertical scrolling through masses of content, an expanding (or even elastic) layout may be the best choice for you.

It is useful to surf around the Internet and look at different sites and the layouts are in use and think about what type of layout may be the best fit for your business.

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