Perhaps the biggest thing that every web designer has to grapple with is the fact that each website visitor might have any combination of web browser, browser window size and screen resolution. In other words, ten different people visiting the site might might have ten different website experiences. Site A viewed on Firefox for Windows on a screen with 1600x1200 resolution will look much different than the same site as viewed on, say, Internet Explorer for Mac with a screen resolution of 800x600. (Why any Mac user would even consider using Internet Explorer, I don't know. This is just a fer instance thing. Go along with me here.)

One of the ways designers try to address this is by creating fixed-width sites. My own personal inclination is against this. I just hate the idea of having a lot of wasted space with a website some 800 pixels wide seen on a high-resolution iMac. But the simple fact is that many site designs simply do not lend themselves well to variable width sites.

Most of the websites I've designed over the years have been of the variable width variety. When it comes to your basic community site design -- which is one of the more common applications of Drupal -- having variable width can be a boon, especially for people with higher resolution screens. Your typical community website is trying to present a lot of information, and the more you can fit on the screen without necessarily having gobs of text in sidebars a mile long, the easier it is for visitors to use.

But sometimes -- sometimes -- a fixed-width design can give a website more of a sense of unity.

This is because you can design all the components of the dynamic site for a specific display. Adding graphic elements to unite the site is also much easier.

All this is to say that as of today (and until further notice) our constantly evolving site design here at pingV has gone to a fixed-width design.

Some will note that in many ways this site does not follow the typical fixed-width display. For example, there is no horizontally oriented graphic that "binds" the site. I'd like to say that this was a deliberate, strategic decision, but really it was a (what I would consider) happy accident. It was on an impulse that I tried setting the width at a fixed 770 pixels. With a little tweaking of the stylesheet, it came together. Adding the ping-rings background to the page seemed to make it click. In fact, I think it's the ping-rings background that unites the site by providing a negative space context for the positive space elements (the posts, blocks, comments, etc.).

Anyway, as a designer with a living, breathing document that is this site, I can't say that I won't continue to tinker with the look and feel here. I really should be putting those efforts into the themes we're contributing to the Drupal community. Yet this is our front door. Our shingle. Our calling card. It's hard to just leave it be. I'm one of those typical Virgo perfectionists. There's always one more thing that could be done to make it just a little better.

Who was it who said, "You never finish artwork, you just stop"? I can understand that sentiment completely.

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