From: "John W. Long" <ng@...>
Date: 2006-06-21T21:39:56+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby-lang.org redesign?

Michal Suchanek wrote:
> However, technical issues are not a matter of taste. And since the
> screens today are far from the same size making the site fixed size
> does look like a technical issue to me.

Agreed that technical issues are important to work out. Fixed-width 
isn't a technical issue though. It's intentional and not uncommon.

The debate is over whether the designer should take the liberty to force 
the text to wrap after a certain point. In print, it is really important 
to make the lines wrap at a certain width because it improves 
readability (as do margins and other layout techniques). It's a little 
different on the Web because we have the ability to dynamically reflow 
the page whenever we want. Some people have made the assertion that Web 
pages that don't force you into a certain width are more usable. For the 
most part, I'd agree that it is nice when you can resize the Web page to 
taste. But you must also understand that in giving the user that freedom 
you sacrifice the amount of creativity you can have with the design 
itself. You can't easily have images that go from margin to margin (as 
images don't normally resize on the Web), fancy borders are also much 
harder to pull off, etc...

At some point someone had to make a decision about this and we did: we 
chose fixed-width for this design. Perhaps the next one will be different.

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com