Left aligned or centered?

[Mousavi]

So what do you guys think? I designed my site for 640 x 480 resolution, so there is a lot of white when high res people visit. Please comment on why you chose what you chose.

Thanks

[Saz]

Hi Mousavi,

With the way you have your site designed at the moment I would say kept to the left because the design is 'open', if you understand what I mean by that - basically the table with your content in 'bleeds' into the background and I just happen to think that would look wrong if it was centred. I'd be inclined to put a border around the table (either black or the darker blue) and then set the page colour to match the lightest blue in your colour scheme. That way the table would look ok centred (from my point of view anyway, which is just personal preference) and not give so much 'white space' to users with higher resolutions. You have to bare in mind here that over 50% of users have their monitors set to 800x600. I run with 1024x768 and the white is way too much if I go full screen.

[goober]

I also selected left align, because of various reasons. More contrast with right/left align, which is good. Left align, then HR, then right-align often does the trick for many a web site.

Hope this helps!

[Macromedia]

I like centered better. However it would look better if you had the content bordered in some way like Saz249 was saying.

[dominique]

I chose centered because I have a 19" monitor at home and I find myself often working on a 21" monitor at school. I sit in the middle with respect to the monitor and left aligned pages are just excruciatingly annoying! I want to look straight into the monitor and not to the left.

I like the fact that your page doesn't use my whole screen, and I commend you for that. But your left aligned page makes it look empty when my browser window does happen to span the entire screen, whereas if it were centered it wouldn't look so empty.

Unlike Saz249, I think your site suffer's a lot more from "white-space" as it is than if it were centered, but just like Saz249, that's my view and it may not be that of the majority.

The end of the line, if you ask me, is don't make me turn my head to the left, just let me look straight! It's much easier for people to look up and down than it is for them to look left and right (which is why I don't understand why some people sit so close to their monitors!).

[SurferGirl]

I personally like centered pages. I think I must be a formal balance person as I like to see a margin around the page and not all that space on the right from a left aligned page. I run at 1024x768 also, but design my pages primarily for 800x600 when I spec out specific pixels table sizes. I like to use % when and where possible so that it plays nice with all resolutions and monitors. I don't take into consideration windows that are not maximized ... wonder if I should do this?.. or how?

[lynlimz]

LOL
What a hard decision.

You know what? WQhy don't you make it customisable to the user? I guess that would be the easier solution to support evertyone'sp references.

very simple. since the alignment is based upon a few bytes of code, put that in a routine..

for example:

if ($align == 'left') { echo "XXXX"; }
else { echo "XXXX"; }

thats based upon php code...you could also use jaavscript..like

<SCRIPT Language="JavaScript"><!--
var QU=window.location.search,FORM=new Array(),PR,name,value;
if(QU.length>2){QU=QU.substring(1);PR=QU.split("&");for(i=0;i<PR.length;i++){
name=PR[i].split("=")[0];value=PR[i].split("=")[1];FORM[name]=value;}}
// --></SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT>
// JUST AN FEW EXAMPLES OF HOW YOU CAN USE THE VALUES...

if( FORM['align'] == "left" ) {
	document.write('');
}
else { document.write('');}


</SCRIPT>

juz my piece of crappy idea.

[Justin S]

Unless the site I'm designing has margins and a border of some sort around the page, I usually left align it. I used to always center sites, but then they didn't look very good.

[OneChance]

I think whether I like left-aligned or centered depends on what the page looks like. News.com, for example, looks fine centered, but would probably look really funny left-aligned. My site has been left-aligned for a couple of years, but I'm thinking about centering it. Which do you think looks better?:

Left-aligned: http://www.palmtown.com/
Centered: http://www.palmtown.com/index2.php4

[goober]

It looks better left aligned, I think.

[dominique]

OneChance, I like centered much better!

[SurferGirl]

I like it centered better!!