There are examples of flexible layouts that work, but they do not have flexible columns of text, they have static width columns that move when the window is resized. So when the window is wide, the content fills in that space, when the window is narrow, the page gets long and narrow. These sites are great because they take advantage of screen real estate without compromising usability. I’ve seen some great examples that I’ll post as soon as I find them again.
Flexible columns are hard to read
There is only a narrow range at which text is nice to read. I use a max of about 80 characters and a minimum of about 25 characters. Any bigger or smaller and the text doesn’t flow right or is hard to track with you’re eye. So if your text is flexible, you will always have to set a min-width and the max-width. IE6 has trouble with both of these, and besides why go to all the extra trouble of making a flexible layout when it can’t really be all that flexible?
Its bad for multitasking
I’ve been learning Python recently and for whatever reason Python web designers love flexible layouts. So I’ve got a browser window with the tutorial taking up 1/3 of my monitor, my text editor in the middle 1/3 and a terminal window and browser window for testing open in the last 1/3. This is a great setup for most things on my widescreen monitor, but because the python tutorial uses a flexible text column that is sandwiched between the navigation sidebar on the left and an add on the right, I’m only getting about 100px of text even though the window 800px wide. I think the aim of flexible layouts is to give the user a choice in how the content is viewed, but this forces me to always view the navigation and the add, while squishing the content down to almost nothing.
And they make me lose my place
My final beef with flexible text columns is when I have to resize my browser window the part that I was reading gets pushed off the viewable part of the page. Now I have to go find my place again. This bugs me.
Problem solved
As a nerd, I’m drawn to difficult technical problems. Flexible layouts are hard, so every time I start a new website I ask myself should I make this a flexible layout? Well, no, I shouldn’t. Good to have that one figured out.