Arrangement of fluorescent lights in tool/storage shed

I have a 24 foot by 20 foot tool/storage shed that I need to have more light in. I have bought 8 used fluorescent fixures. Each has 3 - 4' bulbs. They are the smaller bulbs and will light below 32 degrees. Should I run the fixtures longway, spaced equally apart (about 1 1/2 foot between each) going with the long part of the building? Maybe the first row five foot from one side wall and the other row five foot from the other side wall - that would leave about eight feet between each row of lights. What about height off of the ground? The cross braces holding the building together at the top plate are about 8 1/2 feet off of the floor. I was figuring on running 2" by 4"s across and screwing the lights to it. Didn't think I should put the lights above the cross bracing due to shadows, but I could. Any other ideas about using these light fixtures would be beneficial. Thank you.

Depends on if you just want light in there, or are you going to be working on a workbench with little parts. I added on to the boss's open face shed and turned it into a shop. Put up what I thought was enough lights to do mechanic work in there. Surprise! When I lose outside light thru the windows, I have to quit. Can't see anything.

I have a 20" x 24" shop and I have 6- 4" fixtures, 2 bulbs each, in it.
They are more or less equally spaced out on a finished drywall ceiling. The whole shop is painted off white and there is an 18" x 24" window each on the east and west side. I have an incandescent fixture above my workbench. I have plenty of light to see, even when it"s dark outside, and I"m 62 with far less than perfect eyes.

Depends a lot on what type of work you will be doing in there. Like mentioned before, small finite work on a bench requires more light concentrated in that area. Also, I would mount them as high as possible without creating major shadows. Maybe run supports above the the cross bracing so the bottom edge of the fixture and the bottom edge of the rafter is at about the same level. Another thing to consider is what type of doors you have. Overhead doors will block lights above them if they are open, but open doors also let in more ambient light during the day.
Your plan to run them in strips long ways seems logical enough, but you may consider turning them the other way and spacing them 3' apart.
Then you would have only 3' on either side and 6' between rows which would probably give more even lighting. Good Luck!

This may not help you with your long tube light fixtures, but I found a new lighting product from GE that reall works in cold unheated buildings.

GE sells a "HYBRID" light bulb that combines both a spiral CFL light with an incandescent halogen bulb inside the CFL spiral.

It fixes the problem of CFL's slow starting and dim light when first turnrd on in very cold weather.

How it works is that when you first flip on the lights, the Halogen light comes on bright instantly. The halogen cartridge generates a lot of heat, so it not only gives you instant bright light, but also heats the CFL to full bright operation temp in under a minute, where the halogen light turns off and you run on the warm bright CFL.
The best of both worlds, instant bright light and a CFL's lower wattage and long life after 1 minute.
I have had them in my unheated tool room for 1-1/2 years now and love them.

Walmart has them, they are the GE energy smart series and have a small gold oval logo with the words "GE Hybrid technology" written across the gold oval.

Choose carefully, GE sells several types of energy smart bulbs, but only the ones with the gold oval "GE hybrid technology" emblem are the low temp Halogen / CFL hydrids.