In article <20050405031528.M40231@crystalclearsoftware.com>, "Jeff Garland" <jeff@crystalclearsoftware.com> wrote:
Fighting frozen layouts seems a lost battle, but it's worth repeating: different users have different monitor sizes. People with big monitors want to be able to resize their browsers to view multiple windows simultaneously. You can't assume that everyone's window width is 800 pixels: it's too much for some users and too little for others. "
There is a big difference between assuming a fixed pixel-width and use a max-width in ems.
A survey is not necessarily relevant, unless you are willing to (IMO wrongly) assume that preference for a layout is correlated to its adequacy. HCI studies find time and time again that people don't know what's good for them.
So we should do the opposite of what "we" useful and pleasing because of some HCI studies? That's ridiculous. Maybe we should make the home page look like some ugly site -- say slashdot (http://slashdot.org/) -- any takers? I think the Boost community is fully capable of discussing and choosing wisely.
On matters on which it's authoritative, yes. On other matters, not necessarily. A mark of an expert is not only that he knows a lot, but also that he recognizes where the boundaries of his expertise are. On that note, I am not an HCI expert, so I will bow out of this discussion at this point. I have made my main point already: there are benefits to fixed layouts (expressed relative to font sizes) that may be beneficial to readability for many of our users. meeroh