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When creating a new page based off of a starter page, you can choose from
several layout options like 1, 2 or 3 column layout, and whether or not the page
should have headers or footers. In addition to these specific element choices,
you also need to choose which type of layout you want.
starter page come in four types. We have fixed, elastic, liquid, and hybrid.
In this movie, we'll explore those layout choices and when it's appropriate to
use one over another. We are going to start by looking at a fixed
layout, and I have the fixed.htm page open.
So with the fixed layout, these have column widths that are set to a specific
pixel size, and they are not going to change or resize based on either changes
in screen resolution, browser window resizing, or font size changes.
So I'm going to go ahead and demonstrate that by previewing this on my browser.
Now, I'm going to preview this in Firefox. So some of the things that I'm going to be
doing here, like changing font sizing, it's specific to Firefox, so if you
are using a different browser, be sure to look up in its options or menus to
see how you would do it within your browser. Now, if I resize the browser window, I notice
that my layout doesn't change at all. Now, it's centered to the viewport, so it's
staying centered the whole time, but you will notice that the widths of my columns
aren't being affected at all. Now, what if I increase font size?
Well, I'm going to go up to View > Zoom. I can also set an option to make sure that
I'm only changing the text size and not zooming the entire layout.
So I want to make sure that's turned on in Firefox.
Again, if you are using a different browser, be sure to see how you can change
your font size up or down if you are doing this little example along with me.
So if I increase the size of my font, notice that although areas are getting
taller or skinnier, because the height isn't fixed, notice that the width of the
columns is staying exactly the same. So it doesn't matter if I resize my browser
window or increase and decrease the size of my text, my columns are staying exactly
the same size and the width of my layout is staying exactly the same size.
So a fixed layout is really great for any time that you need fixed layouts,
or you are targeting a specific browser window, or you are targeting a
specific resolution. So I'm going to go ahead and close Firefox,
come back into Dreamweaver, and I'll close the fixed design.
Now, the next one I want to open up is the elastic file, so that we can see an elastic
layout. Elastic layouts have column widths that are
set to ems. Now, an EM is a relative unit of measurement
based on the size of the font. So resizing the browser won't really change
the layout, but the layout is going to react to any adjustments that we make in
text size, and that of course can be set by the client within the browser.
Now, this layout is ideal for accessibility driven layouts or layouts that are
designed for smaller screen sizes. So I'm going to go ahead and preview that
in my browser, and again, changing the browser size doesn't really affect the layout
at all, other than just moves where it's centered.
But watch what happens when I increase or decrease the size of the text.
So if I increase the size of the text, notice that the sidebar and the main
content region are getting larger to accommodate that text.
If I shrink the size of the text, notice that the main content regions and the
sidebar regions are shrinking down as well. So this is a nice scalable layout based on
font size. So this layout is great for accessibility
driven sites, layouts for smaller screen sizes, or layouts for different devices
where the screen size is going to change based upon the device that you are
using. So I'm going to go ahead and close that and
we'll close our elastic file. Next up, I want to take a look at the liquid
layouts. Liquid layouts have column widths that are
set to percentages of the total browser or viewport width.
So these layouts are going to resize based on browser size, and they are really
good for situations where there is no one specific target resolution, or in
environment where the viewport size is going to change frequently.
So I'm going to go ahead and preview that in my browser.
This time I notice that increasing or decreasing the font size doesn't really
change the width at all, and it pretty much stays the same.
But I did notice that the width of this was different from my other pages right
off the bat, because it's based off of a percentage. So if I resize the browser, notice that the
page widths are changing as well. Now, there is something that you need to be
aware of here. When you set something like a sidebar to a
percentage, let's say you make it 20 or 30%. When you size that down far enough, you are
going to finally eventually get to a part where the content can't fit within that
percentage anymore. When you do that, you are going to see something
like this, where we have content that's sort of overlapping each other.
Now, there are certain ways to deal with that, such as setting up a minimum
width for our sidebar. But that is something you need to be aware
of if you are going to use a liquid layout. Next up, let's take a look at a hybrid layout.
Now, these are really interesting. Hybrids layouts are a combination of elastic
and liquid layouts. In a hybrid layout, certain columns may be
based on percentages, while others could be based on text size.
In this particular example, our content region is based off of a percentage,
where the sidebar is based off of an em. This type of layout is usually used to keep
smaller columns from shrinking too much as the screen is resized, while allowing
the larger columns to scale based upon the available screen size.
So let's check that out. So if I preview this in my browser, I can
see that resizing the browser allows the main content to shrink or expand,
but that the sidebar stays exactly the same. But notice that if I increase the font size,
the sidebar changes along with that. So increasing or decreasing the font size
gives me more or less room for the sidebar, where changing the browser window
size affects the main content only. So it's a really nice flexible layout that
offers a lot of functionality. It's a little bit more difficult to maintain,
because you have to keep track of all those percentage values and EM values
and know exactly what they are pertaining to.
Now, I do want to mention that in addition to these four layout choices, there
are several absolutely positioned layouts to chose from.
Absolutely positioned elements are removed from normal document flow and
they're positioned based on values that you give to either top, left, right, or bottom
positions. Since these absolutely positioned elements
don't react to the elements around them, they are typically only used for static
fixed size layouts. Now that we have examined the different types
of layouts available, we'll explore opening a starter page and customizing
the CSS for your own specific usage.