5 Responses to Time to Break the 800×600 Mold?

1. Marco (Griffith) Jardim Said,

   January 23, 2006 @ 12:44 pm

   Mine is 800 pixels wide (actually 804, due to the border), and I’ve gotten no complaints so far. My site doesn’t get *loads* of visits, but still the share of people still using 800×600 resolution is only 3%.

   In my humble opinion, I think 1000 pixels is too wide for a blog, or any site that delivers a lot of text content. But of course, this depends on what font size you’re aiming for and how many columns it will have.

   I am rebuilding my blog right now, and changing some things to improve it over the current version. But regarding the current content text length and font size I think they are fine. If you’re going for a 2 column design, I think the current width is good enough.

   Here are some things I think you could improve on your current site design:

   - Font colors: Even though the text has a nice contrast if you scroll rom the top to the bottom of your blog it feels like the footer and the header are a design of their own and un-related to what’s between them. You should always try to use only 3 distinctive colors on a webdesign that have good contrast between them. And if more need to be used they should be “close relatives” of the original three.
   - Concise Margins (In this case, paddings): Your content text doesn’t have the same value for it’s margins. On the left you’ll notice a line that keeps the text boxed and organized and around 20 pixels from the edge. However, on the right side the margin only seems around half of that and the text just breaks up wherever it ends. For this, I’d recommend you use the same margins or paddings for your text and try to make them the same as the space between your paragraphs. Also, I think that text works better with justified alignment in this particular design because it’s a “closed” design.

   On blogs such as FG, that have a clear “white space” around the main text it doesn’t matter much what text alignment you use, it will work well with either right or left alignment. But on your case, since your content text is surrounded by the margin of your site on the left and a column on the right a justified would give it a more organized look.

   Also, regarding your column, you should be careful about the color your choose for your items like the orange “»” that doesn’t have much contrast with the background. And regarding the background, it should be really be white because the of the icons you have on the list. Remember that you don’t always have control on what you have to put there and sometimes logos, such as Technorati’s in this example, will appear as if they don’t properly fit the design. The solution for this is to either change the column color or to try to style the Technorati so it will have a border around it similar to the small banners above.

   Anyway, enough about critiques, and more about compliments. Your blog is one of the cleanest and easiest to read that I have encountered, besides those using the average scripts of course. One of the things I chose to improve in my redesign was the readability of the text, following your example because it’s one of the things I like the most about your blog.

   Once again, if you need any help with the design of the styles coding, give me a ring

2. David Said,

   January 23, 2006 @ 1:17 pm

   Wow…all very good points. It is just odd looking at my site through the 1200×1024 view, and seeing it only take up around 1/2 of the width of my monitor.

   I guess I will just have to get used to it.

   I am working on a redesign that will hopefully improve the readability of the site, and I will integrate some of the key points you made into the next version.

   So much work needs to be done. I could fix this design, or start again from scratch… Just dunno…

   I thought I had a designer that would do a great job on a design for my blog, but it looks like I was wrong about him, as his previous work better understood my need than the mock-ups he showed me for this blog…

3. Marco (Griffith) Jardim Said,

   January 23, 2006 @ 1:45 pm

   I use 1280×800 on my laptop, and I have the bookmarks open on fullscreen size on the browser and I don’t feel that. If I had a higher resolution than this one, I probably just wouldn’t use fullscreen.

   But I understand what you’re trying to say. My former boss also found the same thing weird. However liquid design doesn’t work for blogs because at higher resolutions it makes the readability really awful. What you can do is a mix between the two and disguise a static design as a liquid one.

   In other words, make a liquid header and footer that stretches throughout the whole width, but a static column and content, but in a way that the content can’t be told apart from the white space besides it. In ASCII design it would be something like this…

   —————————-
   Header
   —————————-
   ///////|
   Column| Content
   ///////|
   —————————-
   Footer
   —————————-

   As for your redesign questions. I think you have a good base to start off in in this design or your previous one. I also had the same doubt when I was about redo mine but then I came to the conclusion that if I keep changing the design I won’t be improving as much.

   It’s easy to come up with great new ideas, the challenge is improving what’s already done and giving continuation to your design in a similar way that projects are upgraded. Sure it’s good to give the site a new look from time to time. But only when you start feeling limited about the design at that point. For my needs, and for the features I want to implement, my current design fits my needs.

   What you need to ask yourself is if this design fits your needs or not.

   Good luck anyway, feel free to contact me if you want to discuss your doubts.

   PS: As for improving readability on this blog, don’t change too many things, I think it’s fine as is. It’s fine to tweak it if you wish for it to fit the design better, but remember the saying “if it’s not broken - don’t fix it”.

4. Claude Gelinas Said,

   September 5, 2007 @ 7:36 pm

   Even though I use a large LCD screen, my browser window has stayed pretty much the same which is to say, roughly 800 pixels wide.

   Although I could stretch my browser window as large as 1600 pixels, I see little usefulness for me to do so since my attention can’t be focused everywhere at once.

   The same logic probably applies for “old style” newspapers who format two news pages instead of just one “super-large” news page.

5. Anto Said,

   August 10, 2008 @ 8:54 pm

   If you decide to do a redesign, would you release this wp theme for download to everyone ? =)