On 14:30:41 21 May 2004 Lucyf wrote:
>has anyone heard of 'postcarding' it is when a web page
>automatically opens in the centre of the browser,
>regardless of the browser or size of screen?

You may find that this design approach is a matter of taste and often taste of those who design it!

Personally I think that it is wrong to target website for some specific resolutions (which is often reason to center it), and its best to make sure that web site is automatically "stretchable".

Here is one simple practical reason why stretching is better than centering - there is more "real estate" visible without forcing visitors to scroll down.

...but different designers will doubtless have their own terms.

Mostly I'd advise against it.

The main reasons why it is used are
1) Better knowledge of Photoshop than the web. In Photoshop you work on a page with fixed width and height. If you extend these restrictions to the web, you get a letterbox layout.
2) Perception of strong branding. Having a design centered in the window arguably gives it more impact than if it were huddled against the edge.
3) Very little content. If the page has little on it, centering it in the window helps it look less "short" and "unfinished".

The problems with the above are
1) The flexibility of the web, as opposed to Photoshop, is an advantage of the medium rather than an obstacle to overcome. Any good web designer should make provision for varying amounts of content, for a user's right to resize fonts to their preference, and the different screen resolutions and indeed devices that may be used to view a page.
2) Fair enough. But what about people with high-resolution monitors? They get a tiny web page surrounded by acres of empty space. And if they are forced to scroll within that area, they're going to find it quite annoying. This is also an unfamiliar location for the scrollbar, which can cause confusion.
3) Justified. If you have very little content on the site, and it's not going to increase later, then there's nothing wrong with using this layout.

There are lots of ways of coding such a layout, some better than others. DON'T USE FRAMES! There are frame-less ways that work fine. My own test pages:
http://www.fjordaan.net/tests/vertical-centering-tables.html
http://www.fjordaan.net/tests/vertical-centering-table-div.html

francois

I didn't mean to suggest that a liquid layout should always be used.

(Jargon guide: A liquid layout is where the content on the page always expands to the full width of the browser window, or proportionally with it.)

The worst thing about a letterbox layout is that the *height* is fixed. No user will ever appreciate having to scroll down while there is still plenty of available vertical space in the window. For an example, see
http://www.nestle.com/

Fixing the *width* is another matter. While you can argue that it, too, is against the spirit of the web medium, a lot of the time it makes sense to use a fixed-width layout. For example for the line-length issue you mention. But often it, too, is just lazy design, because it's hard to mock up a liquid layout in Photoshop.

(In theory CSS allows you to set maximum line lengths, but since IE doesn't support max-width or min-width, that's still just wishful thinking.)

Typically, sites with relatively simple content and little navigation work better with fixed-width layouts, e.g. most blogs or small-company sites. (And you're right, they should cope well with font size changes.) Sites that need multiple columns (typically for navigation) are often better off with a liquid layout. Some good examples:
http://www.dh.gov.uk/
http://www.sitepoint.com/
An added benefit is that this allows you to use a larger font size. (In fact, I would suggest that this very site would be better off with larger fonts and a liquid layout.)

On a final, technical note: If you use CSS rather than tables to lay out web pages, even if you fix the page width, the user -- or another device -- can still override it if they wish.