Liquid dee space, the same way
water takes the shape of the glass it is in. As users, we often
see the monitor screen as a square box which displays information,
images etc. We perceive it as a fixed medium, at standard resolution,
which never changes. For web designers the monitor screen does not
have fixed width or height because these variables change, at times
in unpredictable ways. People might have larger buttons, toolbars
such as Yahoo or Google, they open the Favorites page on the left,
they have a double task bar and so on. Therefore the width and height
of the screen is different from user to user.
Ice is probably the most common element
found on the web today. We often see it without even realizing it.
Ice designs are not really a bad thing, but they do tend to take
away from the user's experience of the site and remind us of the
limitations of the web. "Ice is an element that is frozen solid.
Nothing about the element will change if a page is resized. There
are a lot of Ice designs on the web in which the entire site is
carved from it. Those are the sites that are frozen to the left
side of the browser and only look best at a certain size."A
few good examples of ice designs are ZDnet, HighFive [editor's note:
link removed], The Webby Awards, CNN, and Adobe--most any news or
corporate type web site. In fact, come to think of it, my own site
used to be ice designed--tightly wedged in a 600 pixel-wide table
and carved into the left side of the browser. One of my goals for
Digital-Web.com has been to get away from the ice, as far away as
possible.
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