Flexible Web Design: Creating Liquid and Elastic Layouts with CSS

Introduction

Take the book you’re holding in your hands right now, and resize it so that it’s easier to read.

Don’t feel bad—I’ve given you an impossible exercise, but I promise the book will be filled with practical instead of ridiculous exercises from here on out. That’s because we’re going to be talking about web design, where we’re not constrained by the physical limitations of print on paper.

Though both web and print offer opportunities for beautiful and effective design, each has its own strengths and limitations. To create successful web designs, you need to design to the medium’s strengths instead of fighting against them. One of these strengths is flexibility. Here, I’m using flexible in the broadest sense—built to adapt to an infinite ...