Going wider

May 10, 2006

Yesterday I was asked by someone on Skype why we’d chosen to go with a wider page design for Idolblog, ideal for screen resolutions of 1024px wide and up. It’s a good question. The community site had a lot of content to organise and display. Instead of scrolling downwards to see content, we wanted users to be able to see more of it up front - especially on the home page and forum pages. We wanted to focus on providing a better user experience.

Site stats show 12-14% of visitors are using screen resolutions which are less than this (all 800px wide) and we felt that this was small enough a number to make the switch to a wider page design. For those visitors, we’re looking at tweaking the design to show a slightly different layout (using a simple javascript switch like I’ve used on TalkCrunch) - but in the meantime they (unfortunately) see a horizontal scroll bar and miss seeing the rightmost sidebar (not any core content). We’ve had one regular member complain (and our members have been great at providing feedback at the site’s being updated), but she’s about to upgrade monitors too.

Lots of (big name) sites are doing this now, including:

Designers are also making the switch, including:

Granted, the decision about page layout (fixed width, browser width vs screen resolution, liquid layouts, combination layouts) is an endless debate and is one of the web designers’ holy wars which I’d rather not get into here. There’s probably not ever going to be one solution which works best for all users and all sites.

Digital web has a helpful article on this topic.

See also
Comments

  1. It’s a great start to the new season of Idol Rachel, although my comments on the advertising page has disappeared?

    — Aaron, May 10, 2006

  2. Which comment?

    — Rachel, May 10, 2006

  3. I had a little discusion about that on the WP forum. I made my new design for a screen resolution from 1024 x 768 or higher. My stats tells me that only 8 % of my visitors use 800X600.

    The discusion went about if one or another has to stil take that in mind, or just forget those people with small screens.

    My thougt about that is, that there are limits. Of cours it is a shame for those people, but the site is stil to watch, only different than when you look at it in a higher resolution, because the sidebar will move to under the content. A good solution I think.
    Because a horizontal scroll bar is a little bad. Just a little….

    — redstar, May 10, 2006

  4. I think it’s a great idea. I’m so tired of having massive margins to either side because of a small percentage of people on 800×600, I like the idea of having non crucial content in the right hand bar too so that horizontal scrolling is not neccesary even on 800 wide.

    The NYT redesign does this really well too, and gives it a much more newspapery feel.

    — Pete, May 11, 2006

  5. What as a user, rather than a designer, I can’t understand is why people (graphics trained designers mainly) insist on designing for one width of screen. Users have different size screens, they opperate browsers in different ways, some full-screen but many in smaller windows… Why, oh why, not design the way screens are built, and html is written, for variable screen width!!!

    I detest those wretched blank spaces on either side of your pretty designs, just because you are too arogant to accomodate to your users!

    Sorry for the rant and that a “you” very plural and not you singular Rachel!

    — Tim Bulkeley, May 11, 2006

  6. I hear you Tim. There’s problems with having the design just fill the screen too - including reading length.

    — Rachel, May 11, 2006

  7. Tim, it’s damn hard to design for every possible screen width, not only with reading length as rachel points out, but with the difference in widths. Some people are still on 640 pixels, some are on 1024, some on 1280. Producing a layout that please everyone is not only very, very difficult, but also means sacrificing or changing other parts and losing functionality.

    — Pete, May 12, 2006

  8. Rachel

    From a user (reader) perspective, I like the wide screen if it displays the information better and reduces scrolling.
    I am not sure if I can implement it though on my blog and my websites due to limited time and technical limitations.

    Have a good Day

    Biz:
    http://www.njconcierges.com
    Blog:
    http://www.sergetheconcierge.com

    — Serge Lescouarnec, May 12, 2006

  9. Columns can make the line length thing much less of a problem, especially if you allow your users to change the font size to suit themselves!

    — Tim Bulkeley, May 12, 2006