Suitable layout options...

The layout and how it is incorporated into the design of your web site, can have a great deal of influence on your visitors. A clean looking organized layout can help hold attention while a poorly arranged or haphazard design can be both confusing and frustrating to a potential client. Whatever the chosen layout, navigation is a major issue. The visitor must be able to find their way around with ease.

Fixed or variable width pages?...

This can be quite an important part of the layout but is unfortunately often overlooked. I personally prefer fixed width over variable because of it’s uniformity in any size window. If you are not sure what the difference between the two are, there's a brief explanation below.
The final decision on which style to choose from the two, will be yours. I can only advise you of the pro’s and cons for each method.

The fixed width layout...

The StatSite website is designed using a fixed width layout of 800 pixels with a scroll bar on the right. No matter what size screen you are viewing on, it’s width doesn’t vary. Therefore neither does the layout; it will always retain the appearance as designed, no matter how large the viewing window. On larger monitors it will either be aligned to the left, or in the case of this site, in the centre of the screen.

The variable width layout...

As the name suggests, variable width pages are able to stretch to fit whichever size window they are being viewed in. As you browse the internet you will see many of these, they always fit the viewing window. The main drawback in my opinion is that only the text stretches but not the graphics. Any photos, banners or other images remain at the same dimensions. This can sometimes help make the page layout extremely unbalanced.

Choosing a font style (wisely)...

Another important factor of the design is the style of text used for the body of the page. To the novice this is not a problem. There are thousands of decorative fonts so we’ll just pick one and use it. If only it were that simple. The fact is that because you have a certain fancy typeface installed on your PC you are able to view it. Your site looks great until you view it on another PC. Then you realise that not everyone has that same typeface installed! As pretty as it may look on your machine, the rest of the world aren't getting the same result.

The best of the rest...

Because the availability of certain fonts may be restricted on other machines we try to ensure that similar styles are chosen by specifying font families in the web site code. The most popular styles are named in order of preference and hopefully one of these is installed on your visitors computer. If not, it will revert back to the default style, which is normally Times New Roman. Unfortunately this is a very difficult font to read on screen at smaller sizes.