location of text for the website

[divicohen]

I am getting a new website, I wonder where should I have the images and text?
all the way to the left of the screen or center of the screen...?
and what is the difference?
thanks

[wige]

Do you mean where on the page in relation to other elements (ie navigation on the left and content on the right vs navigation at the top and content in the center) or are you referring to the width of the page (having the page fill the entire screen vs having the content surrounded by bars on either side)?

[divicohen]

this is for a new website...
you know how PDA start looking at a website from the left and if your site is located on the center of the screen you will need to scroll to the right in order to view it... this is what I mean... some sites are located to the left of the screen some are dead center and some take the whole screen.. I wonder aside for the looks of things if there is any benifate of having one over the other...

[wige]

I think this comes down to implementation, and content. Sales and e-commerce sites seem to either spread out over the entire page or center the content, although the sites that take up the entire screen are usually the older sites that have become so branded and recognizable they don't want to risk changing the tried and true layouts.

It seems to me that the more informational sites press the content to the side. I think it becomes a matter of the type of content you will have on your site. When I was designing my company's site, I considered many different layouts before deciding on a hybrid design. We liked the look of the centered content, but because our site would contain a large amount of tabular data, we felt it would scale better if all pages took up the entire screen.

[bj]

Much of this depends on what you're using the site for. If your site will be image intensive then a fixed width might be easier to use since it'll be easy to predict what size image can go where without layout breakage. With a fixed width you then have the choice of either centering the whole layout or letting it go to the left. Personally I prefer a centered layout, though I guess certain ones can look okay to the left.

If your site will be information driven, then the only thing you need to be aware of is to choose a layout that can handle text resizing without breakage when it flexes, and doesn't go to overlong line layouts at the larger widths.

Do be aware that you need to look at resolution stats and see what percentages are looking at your site in the different resolutions so you don't decide to optimize to 1024 width only to find that in your industry you have a disproportionate amount of people still surfing at 800.

[qh4dotcom]

I would put them on the left side since they are more likely to be noticed there. This is because when people start to read a website, they do it starting from the left.