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It's All About The Width
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31 Mar 08 | 11:51am |
I'll return to all this later, but first I'd appreciate some more general feedback from you regardless of whether you're a BBC News website user.
Poll #1163380 Browser / Monitor Usage
Open to: All, results viewable to: All
How large do you most often have your web browser?
Maximised - fullscreen, 1024px +
11 (91.7%)
Maximised - fullscreen, less than 1024px 0 (0.0%)
Maximised - fullscreen, don't know pixels 0 (0.0%)
Not fullscreen, but 1024px+ 1 (8.3%)
Not fullscreen, less than 1024px 0 (0.0%)
Not fullscreen, don't know pixels 0 (0.0%)
If you don't usually have your web browser maximised, and you came across a site that needed more space, would you:
use another site 1 (8.3%)
increase the size of your browser 5 (41.7%)
scroll about 1 (8.3%)
moan on their blog 1 (8.3%)
this never happens to me 4 (33.3%)
When a site doesn't fill the whole width, do you prefer it to be
left-aligned 5 (41.7%)
centred 4 (33.3%)
right-aligned 0 (0.0%)
i really don't give a toss 3 (25.0%)
The new BBC News front page is
much better than before 0 (0.0%)
a bit better 2 (16.7%)
alright 5 (41.7%)
worse 2 (16.7%)
much worse than before 1 (8.3%)
dunno 1 (8.3%)
don't care 1 (8.3%)
Any other comments?
All sites should still be usable at 800x600, if my browser window is smaller than this then it's my own stupid fault.....
Sites that fix width are mildly annoying in general, I tend to consider then a sign of a lazy designer who was trained in print design and hasn't got their head around web design yet. The fact there are loads of such sites is a sign of bad designer training.
My main issue with the new bbc news site is the double headers, one for the bbc and one for bbc news, what a waste of space.....
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Seemingly the top header isn't finished yet. It's actually only 20px taller than the old double-header, but at least the old one had some links that may have been useful to someone.
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Disagree. I've never had above 1024 but I know people with super huge screens and hig res displays.
I suspect that as more and more get better monitors that sort of behaviour, especially amongst the more tech aware (and thus more likely to be power users anyway), this behaviour will become more common.
I've not had time to trawl the Beeb site yet so have no opinion on it, more whitespace is good but fixed to 1024 isn't a good plan anyway.
I agree with your other points, and also agree on max width stuff that Paul mentions, if on a large res, I dislike very wide columns to read, etc.
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the window in each being about 700px, which should be enough for most content
I'd have to double-check, but I'm fairly sure you could get the actual article in that width, but right-hand navigation would require scrolling. I would hope that such users wouldn't actually complain about that because the *content* is indeed within that space, and I hope they would realise that they've actually *chosen* to go narrower than 800x600. Rich's point stands - if the page doesn't fit into half the width of your screen, being able to see all of it it's within your control and it's unreasonable to expect otherwise, given that a mobile-friendly site is a different beast. I don't think 800x600 users will ever go away completely. It's nice to now be able to aim for 1024 though.
So, I appreciate the example of Mr 700&700, but I'm unlikely to deliberately tailor a site for him. I'd be surprised if he's able to use many websites without left-right scrolling, as 800x600 is a fairly common low point (or, more accurately 800px less the width of the scroll bar).
In any event, I guess that power users will soon have a browser with page zooming, so larger widths will be less of an issue.
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