Liquid Design Explained

Liquid design? Trying to design a website that can be viewed the same universally seems impossible. Read on to learn all about liquid design.

What is a liquid Website Design? Most people think that the way you design a website is exactly how the viewers will see it. This is however not the case and the world of websites, computers and the internet is not that simple and confined. People will see your website differently depending on the browser, screen resolution and size. Here is everything you need to know about liquid design.

What is Liquid Design?

If you design a website in the liquid design, it means that your website will flow smoothly and fit into whatever space is available. Liquid design is said to make a website more user friendly (Optimus01_DesigningUserFriendlyWebsites) and accessible. This type of design is developed because not all screens have fixed width and height. In other words, liquid design means that the website will adapt itself to the available space. This can be thought of in the same way that water takes up space and moulds to the specific shape of a glass. The purpose of liquid design is to assist in trying to get the website to look the same no matter where and what sized screen you view it on.

Liquid design will ensure that all people who view the website will see it and experience it in a similar way. This type of design also prevents irritating flaws (Optimus01_ThingsthatIrritateWebUsers). Some examples of such flaws include too much white space (Optimus01_ImportanceofWhiteSpace), disappearing information due to lack of space and the website being rearranged in a illogical order. Liquid design is very flexible and has no constraints. It will expand and shrink to the available space on the various computer screens, this will happen no matter what browser and screens the user is viewing from.

It is believed that this type of website design is suitable for those websites that house a lot of information. This is due to the elasticity of the design. This elasticity will increase the readability of the website, therefore improving your company and increasing your profits.

The Disadvantages of Liquid Design

This type of design does not work with graphical websites. This is because they may not be clearly visible if they have to stretch or reduce in size.
If your text lines are too long, this may make it difficult to read. This can be prevented by creating columns in your website design and layout.
If some elements have a fixed width/design (Optimus01_FixedDesignExplained), any adjustments to the width within different browsers can cause the elements to display incorrectly.
The designer of a liquid designed website does lose a certain amount of control over how the website will look on different screens. This is because some empty space from the fixed design will work its way internally into the design.
This design is more difficult and time consuming in terms of designing and development.
Liquid design can cause problems in terms of printing and the “default page printing”.
Image size to text proportions may create a less eligible look.
If the screen size is too large or small, this can lead up to unreadable text.

The Advantages of Liquid Design

This design will adjust to fit any screen or resolution.
There is no unnecessary empty space when viewing a website that was designed in the liquid design.
The liquid design option is better for those with poor eyesight, as they are able to easily resize the text.
It is also easier to fit all the information on a higher resolution monitor.
Liquid design gives the user control over the webpage and text sizing.
The liquid design means that you never have to scroll from left to right.
All elements on the page will resize to fit onto the computer screen no matter the screen size.