Going for a liquid design holds the answer
Flexibility of your web site is vital in more than one way. Flexibility of your web site is not mere the degree of ease it is accessible to all users but how closely it is tied together with the ease of use of your web site. In another words, if you strive to make your web site flexible, the accessibility should be in harmony with usability issues. This points to creating a web site which offers a wholesome experience to its users across geographies and economies.
Liquid web sites are basically highly flexible web sites which ideally do not have any constraints whatsoever. To be specific, such web sites are specially designed to expand or shrink depending on the available space on the monitor. In this way, they employ the available space in the fullest possible disregarding browser window or the tool bars, or the resolution in question.
Before we delve deep into liquid design as a solution to supremely flexible web site, let’s first have a look on the categories of web site from flexibility standpoint.
Ice web sites: These are rigid web sites in the sense that box holding the content is fixed on the left. On higher resolutions, a blank space appears on the right side of the monitor, thus, showing disequilibrium in web design.
Jelly web sites: Jelly web sites are middle paths between Ice web site and liquid web sites. They are not as rigid as ice design and at the same time are not as flexible as liquid design.
In technical terms, box containing the text is fixed on the center of monitor, and therefore does not cause disequilibrium in web design. However, not all the space on the monitor is used optimally.
Liquid web sites: From web designer perspective, the dimensions of monitor screens are not static, but its length or width varies from user to user.
Liquid web sites are those web sites which fully use up the available space and adapt to it much in the same way water assumes the shape of its vessel.
In what manner does liquid design make your web site flexible?
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Liquid design in your web site helps it assume all the possible space on your monitor. What is interesting here is that this is not at all dependent on other variables like resolutions at use, or number of windows browsers or tool bars, among other things.
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Liquid design is especially useful for web sites having a great deal of information. Liquid design adds not only to the readability of web sites but also the ease of readability.
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Liquid design takes care of irritating flaws in web design, like plenty of white spaces amid content or content just getting blurred or disappeared due to paucity of space.
How to execute liquid design in your web site
Before elucidating on the tips and techniques to execute liquid web design, let’s see what statistics on the resolutions people use while people browse web sites have to say.
What does resolution statistics show?
It is held that people who use Internet extensively like programmers, computer professionals, designers etc. prefer a higher resolution. Most often they zero in on 1024x768 resolutions as they require the same while doing their jobs. Other people who do not use Internet so extensively settle for resolutions like 480x640 or 600x800.
The above assumption underwent a little change in the light of a recent study which suggests that number of people using 1024x768 resolutions has escalated to approximately 44% whereas the number of people having access to 600x800 resolutions has come to 50%. In the past number of people with 1024x768 resolutions was considerably less whilst the number of people using 600x800 resolutions was still popular.
Though as the technologies are changing, people are opting for higher resolutions. Still the number of people who has lower resolutions at their disposal is considerably large, and they should not be made suffer from lower resolutions while they seek to retrieve information on the Net. As is obvious so far, lower resolutions cause disappearance of content on monitor, hence plastic design is a crucial help in sight.
Liquid design: some considerations in its implementation
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For liquid design it is prerogative that you think of web site layout around the concept of elasticity.
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Using short and simple sentences helps you while going for liquid design. Make sure that it is comforting for you to read the text on your web page. This is precisely because users will almost feel the way.
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For liquid design sake, make column 90% wide or less and do not forget to include columns in your web site’s layout.
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Determine the width of tables you are using in percentage terms. This will help the text inside the table expand proportionately.
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While applying liquid design in graphical portions of your site or graphic site altogether, keep in mind that they have got to expand. So, go for designing your graphics precisely the way that it does have an appearance of cohesiveness and continuity once it is stretched.
So, try out these tips to make your web site a bit closer to universally accessible web sites, and hence give your visitors a fabulous surfing experience.