ImpressCMS Core Development

Thanks for the feedback.

Yes it does present problems. Making it look ok in multiple browsers isn't that easy and IE causes a lot of problems.

I'll be fixing the problems during the following days. ( I won't go on vacation).

So it would help me that I get reported as many bugs possible like the right column being misplaced in IE, some links not visible in the forum.

When a bug is reported please tell also the browser and browser version the bug is presented in.

About making it flexible width there's some part of the layout that would have to be redone for this, mostly because of the shadow effects on the sides of the page and because the header main image on top has rounded corners. I will try to make a flexible version without adding more tables but that will take me more time, past the due release date. (also my availability won't be very much during january because I'm moving house, so if someone else can do it quicker, I can send the photoshop of the theme).

Personally I don't like 100% that much. Most people have bigger screens now, and having all the content spread all over isn't nice and it makes it hard to read extra long lines. I prefer compact where the page size is somewhat similar to a normal printed page.

If you look at large news sites like:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine
http://espn.go.com/
http://www.washingtontimes.com/
http://www.usatoday.com/

... they all manage a fixed width around 980 pixels. The clue I think is in managing block displays the right way. For example maybe the left or right column may not be needed at all or maybe just have both visible on the home page if needed but all the inner pages I think it would be better to display the left or right column but not both of them the same time.

An evaluation of the community.impresscms.org blocks is needed I think. For example user menu / user login is integrated into the theme at the top right (those blocks could be disabled). Main menu block is integrated to the theme as the submenu bar below the tabs ( it could be disabled too). Local support sites and community sites blocks, I have proposed to place hardcoded inside the theme at the footer (like all those web 2 kind of sites that have a bunch of links at the bottom), so these blocks could be disabled too. Bookmarks is also integrated into the theme in the footer part, this block could be disabled too; if this is approved to stay I'd like James to revise the code for this part cause he knows more about these social features.

I think all blocks could go either all in the left or all in the right, cause splitting them into left and right columns occupies more than the necessary space.

Also I think I read something about fixed width not going according to accesibility standard (not sure if it was here or at the sourceforge xoops forum where they are talking about a theme contest). I'm not fully informed about accesibility but I don't think this is true. If it weren't accessible those big news sites I just showed wouldn't use it and that's what stylesheets are for. There's stylesheets for web display, stylesheet for printing, for handheld...

Well those are the reasons I think impresscms can have a fixed width theme.

For now I'll go bug hunting with the current theme to leave it finalized.