Graphic + Web Design

Zoom

March 6, 2009 March 6, 2009 Browsers are getting smarter and smarter. Take Apple’s foray into browsers – Safari. Safari 4 offers all kinds of gidgets and gadgets that take the browser paradigm to the next level. IE 8 is not that far off and Firefox keeps gaining on the IE world. But that’s not what I really want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is how browsers are changing the way users can zoom in on content. Firefox, IE 7, and Safari, all offer ways to increase text size or to zoom the page. With a few keystrokes, I can zoom in to a page and all of the content increases in size – including the text. Nothing revealing here, I know. My point is, for us developers, that this shift in user controls will allow the user to have more control over our designs. The debate about fix-width designs as opposed to fluid or liquid layouts may as well be over. That is, of course, as soon as IE 6 is dead. A recent article on A List Apart by Ethan Marcotte, talks about calculating fluid layouts for an em-based design. The math makes perfect sense and the calculations and methods mentioned here are not new. Mark Boulton, Andy Budd, and others have already documented such techniques for arriving at a truly em-based, liquid layout. My question is, “Is it necessary?” The obvious answer would seem to be no, considering the sophisticated advances made by the browser manufacturers. So what’s the hurdle then? Is it only IE 6? Designers are control freaks, no doubt about it, especially designers coming from a print background. A fixed, width, pixel precise controlled layout is going to feel more comfortable than a flexible, width changing, pixel imprecise (or not) controlled fluid layout. With the math that Marcotte presents, it’s not insurmountable, but the variable nature of a fluid layout, frankly, scares most designers. So do we need fluid layouts anymore? Is it necessary to focus so much attention on ems and percentage-based design anymore? What’s the lowest common denominator? Let’s hear your comments.