Fixed Width Layout
In the first days of the web, most monitors were CRT monitors and had 640 x 480 pixel resolution. Therefore, websites were designed to cater to those dimensions. As time went by, 800 x 600-pixel screens came, and then we had 1024 x 768. Developers had to keep changing the website design to suit different screen sizes, and it became problematic.
Fixed layouts begin with the size as species by the web designers, staying at that width no matter what size browser window it was being viewed on. Designers have more control over the appearance of the page in most circumstances with fixed-width layouts. They declare the width property in the CSS code, assigning it a specific value.
Benefits of fixed-width layouts:
- Enables designers to create pages that look identical regardless of who is viewing them on what device
- Images and other elements of fixed width will not overpower text on smaller screens, as the entire page width includes all those elements
- Regardless of the browser width, large text blocks will not have an impact on scan length.
Disadvantages:
- In browser windows that are smaller than the page grid, viewers may need horizontal scrolling to view all the parts of the page.
- If the browser font size is bigger or smaller than the font size used in designing, there may be a weird shift of elements