9. Frozen Layouts with Fixed Page Widths

Complaints here fell into two categories:

• On big monitors, websites are difficult to use if they don’t resize with the window. Conversely, if users have a small window and a page doesn’t use a liquid layout, it triggers insufferable horizontal scrolling.

• The rightmost part of a page is cut off when printing a frozen page. This is especially true for Europeans, who use narrower paper (A4) than Americans.

Font sizes are a related issue. Assuming a site doesn’t commit mistake #1 and freeze the fonts, users with high-resolution monitors often bump up the font size. However, if they also want to bump up the window size to make the bigger text more readable, a frozen layout thwarts their efforts.

The very worst offenders are sites that freeze both the width and height of the viewport when displaying information in a pop-up window. Pop-ups are a mistake in their own right. If you must use them, don’t force users to read in a tiny peephole. At an absolute minimum, let users resize any new windows.