Do you prefer fixed width sites or fluid/filling width sites?

[CESIL]

Why does the whole of your widescreen have to be filled with your browser? Surely one of the few benefits of widescreen* is that you can have multiple apps not set to full screen giving space down the sides for desktop apps etc.?

*no I don't have widescreen monitor...so I rarely have empty space down the sides of web pages. My next monitor will be widescreen but with a rotate facility as I find a portrait layout screen much more useful for office work and even web browsing. (this was a technology that I first saw back in the 80s when desktop publishing first became popular and I have always liked it but the monitors used to be too expensive)

[Pottsey]

A lot of people have two screens with the desktop apps and stuff on the 2nd screen. Plus sometimes you do not want to muti task and only view one website at a time.

[gshaw]

If it's a forum fluid is fine as all you care about there is the text but for anything where image wrapping and text layout comes into play I prefer fixed. Nothing looks worse than a page with a small amount of text stretching right the way across then a random image that jumps all over the place as you resize the window.

Can't be that bad if BBC, Microsoft and Facebook are all using it. I like the sites where the top banner goes 100% width to have one element filling the screen but the content fixed width underneath it.

[ZeroHour]

Very interesting all, looking through the sites I use almost all use fixed widths tbh which is why I asked.
A couple use fixed for frontpage/content and fluid for forums but I personally hate split widths like that myself, I want it to be consistent.
Hmmm

[elsiegee40]

I really don't mind on this... but @ZeroHour you really being masochistic asking for our opinions again!

[SYNACK]

I have to agree with the anti-lowest common demoninator fixed width sites, I am not a stamp collector and feel unfaily shoehorned as one when reading some sites on a high res moniter. Yes you can have multiple windows open but some times you just want to concentrate on one thing and use the full size of your moniter to focus on it. Not saying that it has to be completely adaptive or anything just not wasting 80% of the avalible space.

[localzuk]

A lot of people have two screens with the desktop apps and stuff on the 2nd screen. Plus sometimes you do not want to muti task and only view one website at a time.

Indeed, this is how I operate. I have 2 widescreen monitors at home and have a site open on one and work/Minecraft (hint hint ) on the other. At work I have 3 4:3 monitors and have a site open on one, email on one and stuff i'm working on on the third.

Fluid works best I find, but I also know how annoying they are to design.

[DAZZD88]

I voted for the fluid and width filling option. However that is on the condition that the website has been coded well and the resizing of a browser window or use of a different browser doesn't cause things to become misaligned.