Most modern browsers have both text enlarge and page zoom, I think. (Certainly Safari and Firefox do.) These two options allow the user to enlarge text without enlarging the page (but risk strange things happening to the layout) or enlarge the whole page (but risk the dreaded horizontal scroll bar). If I use an elastic design, I cater for those who don’t have a modern browser, but don’t I take away one of those options? For if they set a minimum text size, or use text enlarge, they effectively get page zoom, just as if they’d chosen page zoom in the first place.

Is this correct? If so, elastic design increases the options for those with older browsers but reduces them for those with newer browsers. If not so, can someone please explain why? (This is not an argument but a genuine question.)

Thanks.

The solution for this is not for designers to allow for every eventuality but to make your window wider! YES I SAID IT. Sure the user is in controll but that controll often produces unwanted results.

Nope, that isn’t acceptable.
It is not up to you as a designer to tell me how to set up my computer and browser. I have it configured to the size and setups that I find most comfortable to work with. Your job is to make sure that your website is sufficiently flexible to adapt to a reasonable range of requirements. And a viewport down to 750px wide is definitely “reasonable”. If you aren’t going to make the effort to design a website that I can use comfortably at my default settings then I will use your site as little as I can.

I guess the all dominant grid has partly put pay to fluid designs – we seem to like complete control over layout dimensions, just as we get in print. (I know you could create a grid using % but you still couldn’t absolutely control the column widths. Are there any examples of % grids?)

Having said that, don’t most users surf with their browsers maximised? Which means you’re going to get some rather wide measures. Could do something with max-width, I guess, but then you’re going to get some gaps on wider monitors).

And thanks for the book samples – they’ve given me some ideas to try out.

Also, you can’t design sites that are fully liquid AND look good since, well, you know, images are fixed size

That’s not true as seen here:

http://sperling.com/examples/zoom/

As for me, I like flexible min-width layouts based upon em’s, which includes basing graphic size on em’s.

There’s no argument that taking advantage of the real estate the user provides is something we should consider, but we should also consider what’s the optimum width (in characters) for reading. Clearly newspapers and magazines have realized this long ago. As such, that should lessen our rush to “use the maximum width possible” and consider there are more things at issue here.

As for the dreaded horizontal scroll-bar, nothing is prefect. Most people realize that when they use a magnifying glass then they can’t fit everything they see into it. So, I don’t think it’s the problem that some people make it out to be.

As I get older, I have more need for the zoom and we’re all getting older — it’s something every web developer should consider in their attempts to reach the largest audience possible, which is what this is all about anyway, right?