

The Perfect 3 Column Liquid Layout - edw519
http://matthewjamestaylor.com/blog/perfect-3-column.htm

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IsaacSchlueter
How is it we're still talking about this?

This is a solved problem, and has been for the last 5 years or so. It's not a
"Holy Grail" any more.

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babul
hear hear.

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Hexstream
What does your comment accomplish that an upmod wouldn't have?

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babul
Did not want to be anonymous in agreement, but felt strongly enough that I
wanted to comment and yet did not have time when commenting to go into
reasoning (only had a few moments before I had to go elsewhere). Hence, the
basic agreement. Was going to elaborate more later (i.e. now) but now don’t
think it’s needed as points have been made by others since.

...also, in the same vein one can ask what your comment accomplishes that a
downmod would't have? :)

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Hexstream
I'd feel uneasy agreeing with your motives.

It'd be a mess if not only a lot of people left purely opiniative (?) comments
because they don't have time to elaborate but this was also generally deemed
good behavior.

If you were about to post insightful commentary later couldn't it wait (in
fact it did wait since your in-the-meantime comment was clearly no
substitute)? Especially since others have expressed what you would have.

" _...also, in the same vein one can ask what your comment accomplishes that a
downmod would't have? :)_ "

I find it surprising that you'd ask that just after clarifying your motives.
Would you have posted that answer if I had just downmodded you?...

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babul
I agree. Your points are well made. Sorry. Lesson learned (next time won't be
so hasty). I'll make efforts to improve signal/noise and quality/quantity
ratios :)

Lastly, if you/anyone just downmoded the comment I wouldn't know who/why so
would not have answered like that. Instead I would have discussed
points/issues/reasons, as I generally try to do in other posts I make.

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sanj
Everyone appears to want CSS to do this. It seems to be hard.

Does it strike anyone else that this is a failing of CSS as a technology?

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aston
It's not so much as failing of CSS as a technology as it is an indication that
CSS is not the language designers want it to be.

What really sucks is that it's actually pretty close to that language.
Everything's fine until you hit the cross-browser compability issues or
realize it's missing a few primitives (like the ability to easily create
columns). Then you want to tear your hair out. And/or resort to hacks.

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mrkurt
I dunno, CSS doesn't really provide much to help you scale a layout. Scaling
using percentage widths is about as rudimentary as it gets.

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Hexstream
What about ems?

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mrkurt
When I say "percentage based scaling", I mean "simply resizing elements to
fill the screen". That's what's rudimentary.

A nice scaling toolkit would let you intelligently use all that width. You
might be able to change how things flow, change how much content shows in
various elements, etc, etc. Making wider columns usually sucks.

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elai
Why don't we just rename the table tag "grid" and just be honest about what it
is. That way, it can either be a layout grid, or a tabular data grid.

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axod
_or_ you could just use tables, which are compatible with more browsers, and
do something more useful with the time you save.

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babul
The whole reason the movement away from tables began is because complex
layouts (nested tables) do not render correctly in different browsers and it
does not separate style from content like CSS does.

Tables also makes it harder for crawlers/interpreters to understand the page
as content may not be hierarchically correct due to layout issues, etc.

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wvenable
If you use tables, you don't have to avoid CSS. They compliment each other. I
agree that nested tables are ugly, but they're also completely necessary now
because of CSS. Using tables to render your main multi-column layout wouldn't
require any nesting. Also, tables are more likely to render in different
browsers (including mobile browsers) than a complex CSS layout.

Given the number of CSS hacks and extra HTML tags in exactly the right order
that is necessary for most column layouts the end result is almost always less
complex with a table.

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babul
Tables should really be used for data that requires it e.g. number sets etc.,
and not for layout.

True, using tables for layout in some sites is much simpler than CSS but
people who do that usually do so today because they do not know how to do it
in CSS properly.

Either way, all is fine, until they start using tables within said layouts
(e.g. for number sets or even more mutli-columning in subsections) and things
start to get problematic. This is especially evident when they try to use the
content in various sites or try to change formatting for cross-browser related
issues (often best solved by having base style sheets for various browsers).

Just my experience and thoughts, ultimately use whatever is best for you, and
you are comfortable with :)

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edw519
Whenever someone posts one of those "How to you like my app" posts, and I have
to scroll horizontally, I mention it. And I usually get shouted down. They
tell me to "graduate" from 800 x 600.

My argument has never been that any resolution is any better than any other.
It's been that your app should work _no matter what_ resolution your visitor
arrives at.

This article is one excellent solution to that problem.

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pxlpshr
The counter-argument to liquid-layouts is the fact that you need to specify a
min-width which is not supported in all browsers (easy fix for jscript sure,
but certainly not hack-free).

So for individuals like myself, who run at 1920x1200, legibility is a
significant issue unless I manually resize my browser window which is about as
much of a pain in the ass as scrolling horizontally.

Sadly, there is no perfect solution when designing for the web. Horses for
courses.

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cdr
At that resolution, you'd be somewhat insane to maximize your browser window.
You should be using software that divides your screen into regions.

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pxlpshr
In OSX, the layering nature of windows to make drag-n-drop more usable
sometimes becomes counter-productive.

There are times when I find I just want to focus on a single item and block
everything else out, which forces me to either maximize Safari, or close down
all my applications.

I don't care for Spaces too much right now, it's kind of buggy with
Photoshop/Illustrator.

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qwph
If you haven't already, you might want to give Think a try. It runs on OS X
and might be exactly what you're looking for.

<http://freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=7013>

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babul
I like liquid layouts as I like things that make good use of the real estate
they have.

Liquid layouts also tend to print more correctly i.e. without bits chopped-off
or missing.

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sah
Isn't this easy to do with tables?

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lanceusa
Great work...I'll bookmark for future reference!

