The problem has boggled the minds of Web designers for years: fixed, fluid, elastic or a hybrid layout design? Each option has its benefits and disadvantages. But the final decision depends so much on usability that it is not one to be made lightly. So, with all the confusion, is there a right decision? By considering a few factors and properly setting up the final design, you can end up with a successful layout design that reaps all the benefits.This article discusses the pros and cons of each type of layout. Either one can be used to make a successful website layout, as long as you keep usability in mind.

Following potential differences among visitors:

• Screen resolution
• Browser choice
• Whether or not the browser is maximized
• Extra toolbars open in the browser (History, Bookmarks, etc.)
• Even the operating system and hardware

---

Dynamic

By contrast, a dynamic web page is a broader concept, covering any web page generated differently for each user, load occurrence, or specific variable values. This includes pages created by client-side scripting, and ones created by server-side scripting (such as PHP, Perl, JSP or ASP.NET) where the web server generates content before sending it to the client.

DHTML is differentiated from Ajax by the fact that a DHTML page is still request/reload-based. With DHTML, there may not be any interaction between the client and server after the page is loaded; all processing happens in JavaScript on the client side. By contrast, an Ajax page uses features of DHTML to initiate a request (or 'subrequest') to the server to perform actions such as loading more content.

---

Static

Static web pages are often HTML documents stored as files in the file system and made available by the web server over HTTP (nevertheless URLs ending with ".html" are not always static). However, loose interpretations of the term could include web pages stored in a database, and could even include pages formatted using a template and served through an application server, as long as the page served is unchanging and presented essentially as stored.

Static web pages are suitable for the contents that never or rarely need to be updated. However, maintaining large numbers of static pages as files can be impractical without automated tools. Any personalization or interactivity has to run client-side, which is restricting.