Introduction
Web design enevitably has some hangovers from the early days. The web is, and always has been, really nothing more than a network of documents. Ok so the documents are often cleverly generated on-the-fly by computer systems, but they’re still documents. That’s one thing a lot of people don’t seem to realise, one of the obsticles to understanding ‘how it all works’. The only unique thing about documents on the web is the hyperlink and by extension, the concept of navigation.
Backstory
With no precident set for navigations, and tables being such a dominant aspect of page construction, they more-or-less defined what the web could look like. From this came the standard 3-area division of the page, with side-navigation, top-navigation and content. Perhaps because of browser behaviour - like the default 10 pixel page padding – or more likely because fluid-width designs were a real pain in the rear, fixed-width layouts were predominent, and this led to the standard ‘boxed’ page idea. Or, the idea that a webpage should have a visibly limited width, enclosed within a box and surrounded by a different coloured background.
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