The AfterConcept crew wishes everyone a very merry christmas and a happy new year! Our aims for 2007 are to bring you loads of quality content. Also as a “delayed christmas present”, expect 2 themes (one resurructed and a new one) for WordPress to be released here soon!

The technique assumes that visitors are browsing in full screen or at least maintains the width of their browser window during the visit. This is not necessarily true, especially with widescreens. I find myself changing my browser width to fit with whatever else I’m doing. If the site I’m visiting has the adaptive layout technique applied the way it is in both examples (1, 2) I will find myself lost halfway on the page looking at a different layout from when I started reading, leaving that site out of frustration instantly.

No more then 1 or 2 switches should be made. One for Smartphones/PDA’s (or two: one for >240 and one for 240-320) and the other for viewing on desktops. Building a fluid layout has it’s drawbacks, which unfortunately can’t be fixed by a styleswitcher.

Consistensy is key in webdesign. With inconsistent rendering among browsers, OS’s and user settings (text size), the last thing we want is another inconsistent factor breaking our carefully crafted layouts.

I welcome techniques like the adaptive layout and look forward to experiment with them and eventually apply it on some projects for control over layout on mobile phones and PDAs. My fear tho is some inexperienced enthusiasts will pick this up and overdo it, creating horrible, inconsistent websites.