Setting Min and Max Width

One of the hurdles that designers face when building fluid layouts is line length. Giving readers the ability to stretch the layout as wide as they’d like is beneficial, but there comes a point when the line length of any given column can be so long that the text becomes difficult to read or so narrow that it breaks other aspects of the page’s design.

This is where the max-width and min-width CSS properties come into play. Setting a maximum or minimum width on a fluid layout will stop the columns from stretching or collapsing past a specified point. Unfortunately, they are unsupported in Internet Explorer versions 5 and 6. Ouch. But these are enhancements that are quick and easy to add for browsers that do support them.