Let me describe the "battlefield" of my task:
Multi-room audio/video chat with more than 1M users;
Custom Direct3D renderer;
What I need to implement is a TextOverVideo feature. The Text itself goes via network and is to be rendered on the recipient side with Direct3D renderer. AFAIK, it is commonly used in game development to create your own texture with letters/numbers and draw this items. Because our application must support many languages, we ought to use a standard. That's why I've been working with ID3DXFont interface but I've found out some unsatisfied limitations.
What I've faced is a lack of scalability. E.g. if user is resizing video window I have to RE-create D3DXFont with new D3DXFONT_DESC while he's doing that. I think it is unacceptable.
That is why the ONLY solution I see (due to my skills) is somehow render the text to a texture and therefore draw sprite with scaling, translation etc.
So, I'm not sure if I go into the correct direction. Please help with advice, experience, literature, sources...
Your question is a bit unclear. As I understand it, you want easily scalable font.
I think it is unacceptable
As far as I know, this is standard behavior for fonts - even for system fonts. They aren't supposed to be easily scalable.
Possible solutions:
Use ID3DXRenderTarget for rendering text onto texture. Font will be filtered when you scale it up too much. Some people will think that it looks ugly.
Write custom library that supports vector fonts. I.e. - it should be able to extract font outline from font, and build text from it. It will be MUCH slower than ID3DXFont (which is already slower than traditional "texture" fonts). Text will be easily scalable. Using this way, you are very likely to get visible artifacts ("noise") for small text. I wouldn't use that approach unless you want huge letters (40+ pixels). Freetype library may have functions for processing font outlines.
Or you could try using D3DXCreateText. This will create 3D text for ONE string. Won't be fast at all.
I'd forget about it. As long as user is happy about overall performance, improving font rendering routines (so their behavior looks nice to you) is not worth the effort.
--EDIT--
About ID3DXRenderTarget.
EVen if you use ID3DXRenderTarget, you'll need ID3DXFont. I.e. you use ID3DXFont to render text onto texture, and then use texture to blit text onto screen.
Because you said that performance is critical, you can delay creation of new ID3DXFont until user stops resizing video. I.e. When user starts resizing video, you use old font, but upscale it using texture. There will be filtering, of course. Once user stops resizing, you create new font when you have time. you probably can do that in separate thread, but I'm not sure about it. OR you could simply always render text in the same resolution as video. This way you won't have to worry about resizing it (it still will be filtered - along with the video). Some video players work this way.
Few more things about ID3DXFont. There is one problem with ID3DXFont - it is slow in situations where you need a lot of text (but you still need it, because it supports unicode, and writing texturefont with unicode support is pain). Last time I worked with it I optimized things by caching commonly used strings in the textures. I.e. any string that was drawn more than 3 frames in the row were rendered onto D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8 texture/render target, and then I've been copying that string from texture instead of using ID3DXFont. Strings that weren't rendered for a while, were removed from texture. That gave some serious boost. This solution, however is tricky - monitoring empty space in the texture, removing unused strings, and defragmenting the texture isn't exactly trivial (there is nothing exceptionally complicated, but it is easy to make a mistake). You won't need such complicated system unless your screen is literally covered by text.
ID3DXFont fonts are flat, always parallel to the screen. D3DXCreateText are meshes that can be scaled and rotated.
Texture fonts are fuzzy and don't look very clear. Not good for an app that uses lots of small text.
I am writing an app that can create 500 text meshes, each mesh averaging 3,000-5,000 vertices. The text meshes are created once, then are static. I get 700 fps on a GeForce 8800.
I'm trying to write an application (winforms) that can demonstrate how two oscillating colors will result in a third color. For this I need to be able to switch between two colors very fast (at >50 fps). I'm really hoping to do this in managed code.
Right now I'm drawing two small rectangular bitmaps with solid colors on top of each other. Using GDI+ DrawImage with two in-memory bitmaps in a doublebuffering enabled control doesn't cut it and results in flickering/tearing at high speeds. A timer connected to a slider triggers the switching.
Is this a sensible approach?
Will GDI and BitBLT be better?
Does WPF perform better?
What about DirectX or other
technologies?
I would really appreciate feedback, TIA!
I have never had good luck with GDI to do high speed graphics, so I used DirectX, but MS has dropped support for Managed DirectX, so you may need to do this in unmanaged C++.
Just write your controller in C#, then have a very thin layer of managed C++ that just calls to the unmanaged C++ DLL that has DirectX support.
You will need to get exclusive control of the computer, so that no other application can really use the cpu, otherwise you will find that your framerate can dropped, or at least no be very consistent.
If you use an older version of DirectX, such as DirectX 9.0c, that may still have support for .NET, and I used that to get a framerate for a music program of about 70 frames/second.
Flicker should be avoidable with a double-buffered approach (and by this I don't mean just setting the rendering control's DoubleBuffered property to True - ironically, this will have no effect on flicker).
Tearing can be dealt with via DirectX, but only if you synchronize your frame rate with your monitor's refresh rate. This may not be possible, especially if you need to achieve a specific frame rate (and it doesn't happen to be your monitor's refresh rate).
I don't think WPF gets around the fundamental tearing problem (but I could be wrong).
This will work with GDI, but you won't be able to control flicker, so it's kind of out of the question. Direct X may be a lot of extra fluff just for showing two non-flickering images. Perhaps SDL will work well enough? It's cross platform and you can literally code this effect in less than 30 lines of code.
http://cs-sdl.sourceforge.net/index.php/SimpleExample
Let me explain what I mean by "two-dimensional code editor": imagine of using Inkscape or Gimp in a big canvas (say infinite). The "T - add text" tool is used to write the code. Additionally, all function definitions will be framed and links will connect the called functions.
In other words: you have a very large sheet of (virtual) paper where you can write.
It would be really useful. I don't want to write code as a long list of lines, especially now that big monitors are cheaper.
Is such a code editor out there?
What's your opinion? Would you use a 2d code editor?
I've written 3 or 4 visual editors and my second one worked like this, that was for java and c++ (never published, though I did use it for some published research work)
I still don't like much to write my code 'as a long list of lines'. My point is, after trying a system like this, I tried a windowed system (class outlines in windows, right click to open code editors), then a tree based system...
in the long run (I wrote several apps using all of those), the tree based system with non overlapping windows felt at once most scalable (to different monitor sizes) and foremost, most productive, because dragging the text boxes and links and/or windows in the first version was necessary, without adding much to the programming experience, so it felt wasteful.
If you want to try some of this stuff out, you can google antegram for java (java only) antegram for web (javascript/php/actionscript) and ee-ide (on oogtech.org). I'm not sure if I could dig up the original c++/java textbox + links editor (which could collapse graphs as well, and had an infinite canvas, so pretty close to what you describe).
I'm not working on this as much as I used to as few programmers ever seemed to like it except me, but if you like working the tree way, or feel like adding stuff for your own purposes, ee-ide would be the way to go, as it's nicely modular and easy to extend compared to the rest.
On the commercial side, you can configure visual studio to work with UML-like diagrams. I have a feel it might be a little too heavy (although it's definitely more coding than UML oriented), but I'm not sure, I haven't really tried yet.
This probably doesn't answer your question exactly, but anyway.
Have a look at the NodeBox beta . It is a visual programming environment mostly for creating generative graphics. You can program and edit the nodes with python code, connect and reuse them in multiple ways. (Windows and Mac OS)
Also worth mentioning (in terms of concept) is Field . It is for programming performances and arranges bits of code on a stage/timeline. Very interesting but also very confusing. (Mac OS only)
Third one is vvvv. It is used a lot by graphical artists to create realtime 3d visuals. Node based. (Windows only)
NodeBox and Field are open-source, so if you are looking to create something yourself you can see how it's done there.
Check this out. I came across it today and remembered this question.
Code Bubbles
Developers spend significant time
reading and navigating code fragments
spread across multiple locations. The
file-based nature of contemporary IDEs
makes it prohibitively difficult to
create and maintain a simultaneous
view of such fragments. We propose a
novel user interface metaphor for code
understanding and maintanence based on
collections of lightweight, editable
fragments called bubbles, which form
concurrently visible working sets.
The essential goal of this project is
to make it easier for developers to
see many fragments of code (or other
information) at once without having to
navigate back and forth. Each of these
fragments is shown in a bubble.
A bubble is a fully editable and
interactive view of a fragment such as
a method or collection of member
variables. Bubbles, in contrast to
windows, have minimal border
decoration, avoid clipping their
contents by using automatic code
reflow and elision, and do not overlap
but instead push each other out of the
way. Bubbles exist in a large,
pannable 2-D virtual space where a
cluster of bubbles comprises a
concurrently visible working set.
Bubbles support a lightweight grouping
mechanism, and further support
connections between them.
A quantiative user study indicates
that Code Bubbles increased
performance significantly for two
controlled code understanding tasks. A
qualitative user study with 23
professional developers indicates
substantial interest and enthusiasm
for the approach, despite the radical
departure from what developers are
used to.
http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm
At one point, LabView had a programming mode like this. You connected program blocks together in a graphical way.
It's been so long since I've used LabView that I don't know if it is still the same.
For me, the MVVM pattern means that there's no code behind the UI controls anyway. The logic is all in a class with properties.
The properties use WPF databinding to update the UI controls. For example, on the form or window, page, whatever, MySearchButton.IsEnabled is bound to ViewModel.MySearchButtonIsEnabled property. So the app logic runs in the ViewModel class and just sets its own properties and the UI updates automatically.
Although this is specific to MS WPF the pattern actually stems from SmallTalk and is found across the development field as MVP. Without WPF one would need to write the databinding or 'presenter' logic, which is common.
This means the UI can be torn off and a new one pasted-in really quickly and with little code knowledge from the UI guy - who, in an ideal world, is a crack creative guy that drives a 70s Citroen.
So my point is that, although it sounds like a neat innovation, a 2D editor like this would be assisting a coding style that is no longer considered optimal.
I am in the process of developping a game, and after two months of work (not full time mind you), I have come to realise that our specs for the game are lacking a lot of details. I am not a professional game developper, this is only a hobby.
What I would like to receive help or advices for is this: What are the major components that you find in games, that have to be developped or already exists as librairies? The objective of this question is for me to be able to specify more game aspects.
Currently, we had specified pretty much only how we would work on the visual, completely forgetting everything about game logic (AI, Entities interactions, Quest logic (how do we decide whether or not a quest is completed)).
So far, I have found those points:
Physics (collision detection, actual forces, etc.)
AI (pathfinding, objectives, etc.)
Model management
Animation management
Scene management
Combat management
Inventory management
Camera (make sure not to render everything that is in the scene)
Heightmaps
Entities communication (Player with NPC, enemy, other players, etc)
Game state
Game state save system
In order to reduce the scope of this queston, I'd like it if you could specifically discuss aspects related to developping an RPG type of game. I will also point out that I am using XNA to develop this game, but I have almost no grasp of all the classes available yet (pretty much only using the Game component with some classes that are related to it such as GameTime, SpriteBatch, GraphicDeviceManager) but not much more.
You have a decent list, but you are missing storage (save load), text (text is important in RPGs : Unicode, font rendering), probably a macro system for text (something that replaces tokens like {player} with the player characters name), and most important of all content generation tools (map editor, chara editor, dialog editor) because RPGs need content (or auto generation tools if you need ). By the way have links to your work?
I do this exact stuff for a living so if you need more pointers perhaps I can help.
I don't know if this is any help, but I have been reading articles from http://www.gamasutra.com/ for many years.
I don't have a perfect set of tools from the beginning, but your list covers most of the usual trouble for RUNNING the game. But have you found out what each one of the items stands for? How much have you made already? "Inventory Management" sounds very heavy, but some games just need a simple "array" of objects. Takes an hour to program + some graphical integration (if you have your GUI Management done already).
How to start planning
When I develop games in my spare time, I usually get an idea because another game lacks this function/option. Then I start up what ever development tool I am currently using and try to see if I can make a prototype showing this idea. It's not always about fancy graphics, but most often it's more about finding out how to solve a certain problem. Green and red boxes will help you most of the way, but otherwise, use Google Images and do a quick search for prototype graphics. But remember that these images are probably copyrighted, so only use them for internal test purposes and to explain to your graphic artists what type of game/graphic you want to make.
Secondly, you'll find that you need to find/build tools to create the "maps/missions/quests" too. Today many develop their own "object script" where they can easily add new content/path to a game.
Many of the ideas we (my friends and I) have been testing started with a certain prototype of the interface, to see if its possible to generate that sort of screen output first. Then we build a quick'n'dirty map/level-editor that can supply us with test maps.
No game logic at this point, still figuring out if the game-engine in general is running.
My first game-algorithm problem
Back when I was in my teens I had a Commodore 64 and I was wondering, how do they sort 10 numbers in order for a Highscore? It took me quite a while to find a "scalable" way of doing this, but I learned a lot about programming too.
The second problem I found
How do I make a tank/cannon fire a bullet in the correct direction when I fly my helicopter around the screen?
I sat down and drew quick sketches of the actual problem, looked at the bullet lines, tried some theories of my own and found something that seemed to be working (by dividing and multiplying positions etc.) later on in school I discovered this to be more or less Pythagoras. LOL!
Years and many game attempts later
I played "Dune" and the later C&C + the new game Warcraft (v1/v2) - I remember it started to annoyed me how the lame AI worked. The path finding algorithms were frustrating for the player, I thought. They moved in direction of target position and then found a wall, but if the way was to complex, the object just stopped. Argh!
So I first sat with large amounts of paper, then I tried to draw certain scenarios where an "object" (tank/ork/soldier) would go from A to B and then suddenly there was a "structure" (building/other object) in the pathway - what then?
I learned about A-star pathfinding (after solving it first on my own in a similar way, then later reading about the reason for this working). A very "cpu heavy" way of finding a path, but I learned a lot from the process of "cracking this nut". These thoughts have helped me a lot developing other game algortimes over time.
So what I am saying is: I think you'll have to think more of:
How is the game to be played?
What does the user experience look like?
Why would the user want to come back to the game?
What requirements are needed? Broadband? 19" monitor with 1280x1024?
An RPG, yes - but will it be multi-user or single?
Do we need a fast network/server setup or do we need to develop a strong AI for the NPCs?
And much more...
I am not sure this is what you asked for, but I hope you can use it somehow?
There are hundreds of components needed to make a game, from time management to audio. You'll probably need to roll your own GUI, as native OS controls are very non-gamey. You will probably also need all kinds of tools to generate your worlds, exporters to convert models and textures into something suitable for your game etc.
I would strongly recommend that you start with one of the many free or cheap game engines that are out there. Loads of them come with the source code, so you can learn how they have been put together as you go.
When you think you are ready, you can start to replace parts of the engine you are using to better suit your needs.
I agree with Robert Gould's post , especially about tools and I'd also add
Scripting
Memory Management
Network - especially replication of game object states and match-making
oh and don't forget Localisation - particularly for text strings
Effects and effect timers (could be magical effects, could just be stuff like being stunned.)
Character professions, skills, spells (if that kind of game).
World creation tools, to make it easy for non-programmer builders.
Think about whether or not you want PvP. If so, you need to really think about how you're going to do your combat system and any limits you want on who can attack whom.
Equipment, "treasure", values of things and how you want to do the economy.
This is an older question, but IMHO now there is a better answer: use Unity (or something akin to it). It gives you 90% of what you need to make a game up front, so you can jump in and focus directly on the part you care about, which is the gameplay. When you run aground because there's something it doesn't do out of the box, you can usually find a resource in the Asset Store for free or cheap that will save you a lot of work.
I would also add that if you're not working on your game full-time, be mindful of the complexity and the time-frame of the task. If you'll try to integrate so many different frameworks into your RPG game, you can easily end up with several years worth of work; maybe it would be more advisable to start small and only develop the "core" of your game first and not bother about physics, for example. You could still add it in the second version.
Update:
I deleted my motivation because it seems to distract readers. This is not about "why don't you make your window smaller". See the screenshots and you will see obstructed text because of fixed width. See my reference to "em/ex" notation in CSS. I would like to have a real discussion here. Thank you.
Now I would like to ask real experts on this topic -- I'm not a web designer -- why fixed width layout are still that popular and if there are really good reasons for it. (you are welcome to point out reasons against it as well.)
Is it too hard to design your layout relatively (from start on)? It seems some people even forgot how to do it.
Do you have real reasons like readability and just don't know how to deal with it correctly? Here I'm referring to pieces of wisdom, like it's harder to read longer lines (that's why newspapers use columns) -- but then, width should be given using em and ex.
Are you forced by some old guidelines? In the dark old age of HTML, people did a lot of things wrong; now everybody finally uses CSS, but perhaps this one just sticked.
Or are you like me, wondering why everybody is doing it "wrong"?
To illustrate the issue, I want to give screenshots of negative examples first:
StackOverflow (here I can't even see what would make it any hard to fix it)
Filmstarts (a german website which renders itself unreadable-if I don't take a reading-glass with me)
And here is a positive example. It looks like a typical fixed with site (even with transparent borders), but it is not:
Website on Wiki software -- associated Forums
What do you think?
Update: Related questions: this one and that one.
And here, as expected, comes the usual canard: “long lines are too hard to read”.
[Citation needed], folks.
See http://webusability.com/article_line_length_12_2002.htm for a summary of actual research in this area. A number of these, plus http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLength.asp, find that although users express a preference for moderate line lengths, reading speeds do not sharply drop off with ‘long’ lines; in fact many show increased speeds with the longer settings.
As long as it's not ridiculously long, and taking care to use a decent amount of leading, long lines are not generally a real issue at today's typical browser widths and default font sizes. (If you're one of those designers that loves to use teeny-tiny type for everything, it could be an issue, but then you're already making it impossible to read with the flyspeck text. Stop it!)
So as it's only an option of user preference that prefers medium-short lines, let us users decide how much screen space we want to give the web site to get our work done. We're the ones best-equipped to know. If you decide you know definitively best you're likely to waste space, or, if you guessed too long, make us scroll back and forth sideways to read the text — and that really is a readability nightmare.
If you want to protect us from ourselves, you can compromise by specifying a min-width and max-width in ‘em’ units so that the page is responsive to liquid layout, but doesn't get stretched to extremes.
But otherwise, the best reason to design fixed-width is indeed that it is easier, especially for someone with a fixed-2D-grid view of the world and static visual-design tools like Photoshop.
It's already a pain to make a website that renders correctly across all popular browsers; if you also want it to render correctly at all text sizes, it's quite a lot of work. A lot of web developers design their sites for the default font size and try to support fonts that are either a little bit larger or a little bit smaller. (You might be interested in this dated but relevant piece from Jakob Nielsen.)
As for fixed-width sites, it's hard to say. Personally, I suspect that a lot of web designers just like to feel like they have a lot of control over their look and feel, and think the site looks "ugly" when you stretch it too far, so they don't let you do it. Probably not wise, but there you go.
Now I would like to ask real experts
on this topic -- I'm not a web
designer -- why fixed width layout are
still that popular and if there are
really good reasons for it.
Ah, both subjective and argumentative. I'm sure my argument won't convince you, but here's one really good reason, IMHO:
Presentation.
Just like a movie, the director has an experience in mind for the viewer. They frame the movie just so. They move the action at a given pace for the emotion they are trying to invoke in the viewer. Even though DVDs have had the "angle" feature since inception, few movies have ever given viewers the opportunity to watch the film from a different point of view, and if they have that viewpoint was still under the control of the director.
Now, any old sap can throw up a website, and for the most part they aren't interested in anything more than the content.
But real designers fully understand that the design must be understood as a whole. A wide layout has a very different impact on people than a multicolumn or thin layout. Reader eyes move in a certain pattern, and the text is intended to pull the reader along a path.
Those who claim that every layout should have certain features are shortsighted. There are no universally true 'rules', and trying to make an expanding layout a rule is shortsighted at best, and arrogant at worst.
-Adam
Here are my $0.02 and they are worth exactly what you paid for them (and if that's not a perfect example of the current economic situation... :-))
The layout of a website should be dictated by the overall user experience. This is in part determined by the accessibility, in part by the design, in part by the functionality:
Accessibility - as several people pointed out, letting the website use the full width of the browser without any control can result in quite a long lines that make it hard to read[1]. Making the text automatically layout in multiple columns is a potential answer to this problem, but it's really hard to achieve with CSS (that's gotta be the worst tool for doing layout humanity ever devised, but that's a separate topic) and is fraught with other issues as well.
I should note that you do have a point - most websites with fixed width do suck on high-DPI because they don't take into account the changed font size. However, that's not an inherent problem of the fixed width design; I've seen it with fluid designs as well.
[1] No, I don't have a citation. I, however, have tried reading on full-screen on my 24" 1920x1200 96dpi [2] and gotta tell you - after 15 minutes my neck is cramping from the constant turning of my head.
[2] The typical user still runs 1024x768 or 1280x1024 (based on instrumentation from the product I work on, with about little bit less than 10mln installs for the latest version). So yeah, I am not the typical user.
Design - most modern designs are very rich on graphical and video elements. Most graphical elements do not scale well with the document reflow and video does not scale at all. (I would again blame this on CSS - it's support for dynamic resizing of images is lacking some basic operations and there is aboslutely no support for building and control of the visual tree. But I digress again :-)) As such, disegners opt in for the easier approach.
Functionality - fluid layout is really good for dealing with big text chunks like documents. However, quite a few modern websites are in effect applications, not documents. They have multiple elements and controls and increasing the area on which these elements are scatered makes it harder for the user to keep all of them in focus.
Couple examples:
two control groups that are aligned at the left and the right end will be too far away from each other in full-screen width. Note: that can be alleviated by choosing to always keep all the controls grouped together, like most desktop applications do (almost all desktop apps keep all toolbars left-aligned).
a picture/video and associated text below it. On full screen there are two possible approaches for fluid layout:
a) scale the picture to the full width, at which point the text is visually lost
b) leave the picture the same width, but let the text flow the full width, at which point the picture is visually lost.
I guess my point is that the fluid layout is not the Holy Grail of all layouts and there are scenarios where it's not applicable. The designer and the developer of the webapp should choose the appropriate layout and implement it so that it meets the needs of the target users, delivers the best experience of the product functionality and adapts to the user environment.
I suspect that most web developers go for fixed width because it's by far easier to develop such a site (in addition, many Content Management Systems only offer a fixed-width layout).
Getting a dynamic layout to work well & correctly in different browsers is more tricky - but it is definity doable (I'm just recently working on that issue ;-).
And I do agree with you - I want web pages that dynamically adjust their contents to the browser size that I as the 'customer' like to work with (whether that's small or large). I don't like to be patronized into "not using my browser in full-screen mode" or anything the like...
You might try zooming in. Most modern browsers will zoom the whole page by default, not just the text. This preserves the page layout and uses more of your screen. Usually the shortcut is ctrl + + and ctrl + -. It works well on my laptop, at least
[Forget my mention of the windowmanagement, it wasnt on topic]
I currently run a big internet-community and we'll switch to fixed-width (for 1024px) design asap because we only get problems currently using a dynamic-width-layout: You cant rely on anything, and (the biggest problem imho) text gets to long, so there are only a few lines but the lines themself are much to long to overview.
Readability and Predictability
You need to know how things will be displayed to be sure it will be readable and pleasant to the eyes. By using a fixed width, you know exactly (almost exactly because of cross-browser support) what your users will see.
However fixed-width designs would be a thing from the past if browsers could support correctly exactly 2 CSS properties:
min-width
max-width
That would allow designers to design web sites that would be flexible and predictable. No more surprises and users can use whatever resolution they want.
In my experience, it is for two reasons:
1) Speed - it is generally faster to write a web page in fixed with, rather than trying to write one that resizes correctly at more than a small number of resolutions.
2) The designer of the web site isn't the ultimate approver of what goes into production - if you try to work with a flow instead of fixed layout you get questions about why it looks different on Sallys' PC vs the Big bosses, and why can't you move this over to here, etc, which are easier to fix by moving to a fixed layout.
Tabbed Browsers
Since I use a tabbed browser for day to day use, resizing my window every time I switch tabs is actually a bit of a hassle. I have the window set to the maximum usable width for my purposes, and to accommodate the "largest" tab that is open. For the remaining tabs, having fluid layouts is actually kind of annoying and distracting. Items and text jump around and change position depending on how I may have resized my window for another tab. Also, fluid layouts result in uncomfortably wide blocks of short (vertically) text.
For me, it's a lot easier as a reader to keep my eyes tracking properly on narrower blocks of text with lots of vertical scroll, and it's much easier when sites I'm familiar with stay the same size so that the layout and positioning is predictable, regardless of what I've done to my window to accommodate other tabs. I actually used to be a big fan of fluid layouts, but I find more and more that I prefer fixed layouts now that I use a tabbed browser.
I think the question shouldn't be "Why would you choose a fixed-width design?" it should be "why wouldn't you?"
Firstly, you need to cater for the lowest-common denominator. Many developers will be running on screens with resolutions like 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 1280x1024. Some users will be using 1024x768, which I personally consider the lowest resolution you need to cater for (thank God it's not 800x600 anymore). If you fix the width to 960-1000 pixels then you don't run the problem of developers unintentionally making pages that can't be viewed without scrolling on a monitor with less than 1600 pixels (wide). Believe me it happens.
Layout on any non-trivial Webpage is hard. Throw in cross-browser support such that your page not only works but looks reasonably consistent and it's a huge problem. Now try to throw in variable width and it just gets that much worse if not impossible. Look at the payoff too: who is it going to benefit? A small minority of users that have high resolutions and actually want to stretch that content across the entire screen. I have a widescreen monitor and I won't maximize my browser for instance. Many people are like me in this respect.
Consider another problem: CSS. CSS s good for many things but is a royal pain in many others. For one thing. Now browser box model differences aside, there are still many quirks with how different browsers handle CSS and even if there weren't there are many trivial things CSS can't do and the only workaround is to do things by pixel.
As a concrete example, I'm doing some tables at the moment that are bursting at the seams. I'm reloading the contents with an Ajax call and replacing the contents. Now I at first tried to fix the widths of the columns with percentages. Doing it this way would be a prerequisite for not fixing the width. Firefox treated those as a suggestion and would resize them anyway even when it arguably didn't have to. I didn't get satisfactory results until I fixed the widths in pixels.
At the end of the day no website really cares if it stretches across 1600 pixels or not. That's what it comes down to.
I've worked with a lot of artists. They design a layout to be pleasing and clear. They want the presentation to match what they designed. Artist-driven design leads to fixed-width. For brochure sites, fixed width makes a lot of sense.
For sites with rapidly-changing content (news or shopping, or most anything driven by a CMS), I much prefer fluid, full-screen designs.
One of the biggest concerns that fixing the width of a website solves is readability. If you let a site be arbitrarily wide and have a block of text using that entire width, it becomes very difficult for people to read. If you make the font size bigger to compensate, then you destroy the experience for people with smaller screens.
On the other hand, if your content is visual or modular and you can make it fill up the page more intelligently, you might have a case for a totally fluid layout.
But I agree with the others who question why you would maximize a browser on such a big display. Why not make your browser window smaller? You'll be more productive and you'll stop worrying about it at the same time.
Many browsers do a better job of scaling websites to be larger than they used to; Firefox 3, at least, grows the entire page when you zoom in, not breaking the layout.
If you want it to take up more screen real estate, use a lower resolution. This can be useful if you're displaying a website on a large monitor up on a wall for public view. Otherwise, take #theomega's advice and use the rest of your screen for other windows.
As for a little (of the very little) of what I know about web design and fixed width sites:
They tend to make good use of white space and draw your focus down the page. Cluttering up the page by cramming every last corner with content is what designers call "visual intimidation." It's difficult to figure out what's important versus what's not.
They feel more "finished", like a picture in a frame instead of like a photo print thumb-tacked up on a cork board.
"It has a resolution of 1920x1200, so all fixed-width sites waste space
The form factor is only 15". So I have to use larger fonts and the text won't fit into these crammed layouts any more, sometimes even getting obstructed by other elements."
There is a good reason for that. If the paragraph are stretched too wide, it gets more difficult to read. Humans need a "break" after about 15 to 20 words and that is EXACTLY why we don't have books that are very wide.
The higher resolution allows you to have MORE details BUT it also depends on HOW you use the space. I never maximize the browser and PC's are built for window multitasking, not ONE window at a time.
The whole point of being able to adjust the size of your browser window is to better see the content of a web page, in the way that suits your situation. If the page isn't going to adjust, why not just make browser windows a single, fixed size?
If I have a big monitor, I want to be able to stretch my window out and have the content correctly fill it. If I need space for another window, I want to be able to shrink my browser window down and have the content correctly adjust by changing the layout (until a certain minimum point, and then by switching to a scroll bar, of course.)
Fixed width layouts are perfectly acceptable.
Fluid layouts are nice, but are more difficult to implement, especially if there are more than two columns and source div order is important.
Line length is an issue regarding readability, but this interacts with font size. So you have to balance width against likely font sizes on screen.
Nowadays, it's reasonable to assume that 1024 x 768 and up is the vast majority of the desktop user market, so you can safely design for 960 px fixed width -- for screen media type.
A couple of important constraints:
ensure is that horizontal scrolling
is never required by the user
if conversions are an issue, make sure
that clickable things -- particularly
"calls to action" or anything than
makes your cash register go
"ka-ching" should not fall to the
right of the 770th pixel or so --
just in case.
But another consideration is handheld media. You should provide alternate CSS for handheld media type. Many of these screens are under 400 px wide.
Delivering a site that looks good and functions on a wide variety browsers, devices, display widths and viewport sizes is a moving target and continuous challenge.
As regards the filmstarts.de site, it is definitely a mess, but the problem is not that it is a fixed width layout, but rather with how the layout is designed and implemented. There are good and bad implementations of fixed width layouts, just like there are good and bad implementations of fluid layouts, or semi-fluid layouts with fixed width elements, etc.
I put it down to laziness. Fixed width layouts are simply easier to design and make look nice because you do not need to worry about the size changing. This, for example, makes it really easy to add images, since you know what size the layout will be.
Personally, fixed-width websites really irritate me. I like to use large monitors. I paid a lot of money for them, so I'd like to make use to make use of them instead of having most of it be left blank. This is made even worse by sites which refuse to get larger if I increase the font size. I don't have the best eyesight and often use larger fonts to read text on websites and nothing is worse than a fixed-width layout leaving me with three words per line and a mostly blank screen...
As far as I'm aware while all the reasons cited are valid, the primary reason is that a lot of machines in monolithic institutions like banks and government orgs are still on fixed and somewhat archaic low resolutions. It's just the lowest common denominator sadly.
I personally like fixed width sites better. I am not forced to mess with my browser window to get a line size I can deal with. I personally find very long lines very hard to read. I also just think it looks better although that is 100% completely subjective.
I have designed and worked with both. Some aspects of variable width sites make displaying data easier. The only problem I have had with them is due to right aligned navigation which was a little messy when it could move based on the user's browser setting.
My final answer - both are fine and each have their place.
I just came across this site, which actually has a link in the top right corner that lets you switch between fixed and fluid.
http://developer.spikesource.com/wiki/index.php/Home
A major point for using fixed width is that the designer can actually control the way the webpage looks irrespective of browser environment. I see two reasons to use FW:
The designer wants the webpage to look all the same.
The designer lacks time/wish/... to test their page in different modes and in different browsers, and just avoids the risk of webpage layot starting flying around.
I didn't make fixed-size layout until I switched to a 32 inches monitor. It is very hard to read the text if the lines goes over 32 inches. I've learned appreciate text that do not span over more than 1,000 pixels, and I have switched to fixed layout since.
But I agree that reducing the content width to < 800px is a pain when you have a big monitor.
Most users lack understanding of how to use a browser properly. When the day come such that users actually know how to use a computer then you will understand that fluid width is the obvious choice for web sites.
I am frequently forced too. None of the 3 developers here has a strong background in design, and the dictated rules and implementations we strive for reflects this. It is an area I want to improve in.
Liquid layout using % as unit can adapt to any screen.
Some layouts must use fixed column design. If there's table or image in the column, you have to use fixed column, or the table or image will break the column in liquid design.
In grid layouts with heights of the grid normally fixed, it's better using fixed column or the widths may got uneven.
It's upto the content of webpage to use elastic column or fixed column layout.
Long lines of text can be difficult to read. For the website I work on we limit the width for usability and readability. We have also designed our site to scale well using CTRL-+ to zoom.