I've been meaning to make some alterations to Zinknation's layout and I've finally gotten around to it.
The change list:
The biggest change was moving the site from a liquid/elastic width layout to a more simplified fixed-width site that is centered on the page. Deep down inside, I like to use liquid layouts because they're a bit more difficult to create and, generally, much cooler. However, I've come to the conclusion that liquid layouts are pretty lame for article-based sites, like blogs. If you have a really big monitor and you maximize the browser, you can end up having an entire paragraph spanned across one really long line. To me, it's just hard to read and looks bad.
Of course, the debate between fixed/liquid layouts has raged on amongst the web design community for a number of years.
In the business world, my experience has taught me that clients generally do not care that a web site has a liquid layout, they just care that it looks good and doesn't take forever to design. So, for general purpose web sites, I recommend a simple fixed-width layout. However...
For the most part, any sort of web-based application will probably look and function better with a liquid layout. Google maps, Google Docs, and Campfire are all prime examples. They actually increase the amount of content that can be display in the browser--they don't just make the existing content s-t-r-e-t-c-h across the screen.
Google Maps: 1024 x 768 versus 1650 x 1050
But, I digress, let me know what you think about the new layout!
© Copyright 2008 Kevin Zink