Widescreen Part II

Following up on my previous post about how widescreen laptops will change the way we do web design, a few examples popped up.

First of all, Dan Cederholm from SimpleBits redesigned recently, and got rid of his style-switcher, which had allowed his users to switch between a fixed-width and fluid-width design. His new design uses a fluid-width with a max-width property applied to it, which is a good decision to get the best of both worlds. But there was so much outcry that he was forced to bring back the switcher and provide a fixed-width design. Maybe not everyone in the audience is ready for widescreen design, even if it has their best interests at heart.

Secondly, Hyatt from Surfin’ Safari posted an interesting article about this topic, called “High DPI Web Sites.” His take on it is that websites, like DVDs, should scale for the presentation medium. If a viewer on a standard monitor views the site, they see the normal content. But if a viewer on a high-res monitor views it, the site should seamlessly provide higher-resolution content. His post is less about CSS layout techniques, and more about scalable content, such as SVG, but it’s still an interesting read. This is a new topic, and there’s still a lot of confusion about it, as evidenced by Hyatt’s need for a followup to the first post.