Thursday, May 18, 2006
Web Page Inflation
There are so many things in life to complain about, I scarcely know where to begin. But if you complain about really significant things, then people get the idea that this is something that matters and they get much too worked up. I prefer to think of complaining as an art form intended primarily for entertainment, so I stick to topics that won't have people insisting that Something Must Be Done about this burning issue.
Today's topic is web pages that keep getting wider. I've always believed that a computer monitor should hold as much content as possible. As I get older, my brain holds less information. Well, actually it holds more, but much of it is not really useful in everyday life. For some reason, my boss has never asked me to recite the lyrics of Horse Latitudes from memory. But when he does, I'm really going to impress him. Anyway, the best way to have more information ready for immediate access is to have it on my computer monitor. That means I need as many pixels as possible. Ever since the first 3270 displays on the mainframe computers in the 1970s, I've always insisted on having a display with the maximum possible amount of content. These days, I refuse to work with a laptop with less than 1600x1200 resolution. My desktop computer at home (a Dell XPS Gen 5 if you're interested) has a 1920x1200 display. I now wish I had waited a few more months and saved up a couple thousand dollars more so I could have a 3007FPW display with 2560x1600 resolution. I typically have lots of windows scattered around my desktop, so I can keep an eye on all of them. However, my way of doing business seems to be rather atypical. Most users seem only interested in big type. They want to see fonts so big, the characters look like they were written with a crayon. Since they don't know how to adjust the font size, they go for the largest display possible with the lowest resolution possible. In most cases, this means 1024x768. If they want to get more than two words of text per line, that means they really need to maximize their browser window to fill the whole desktop.
So what is happening now is that authors of web pages are optimizing their pages for a browser at 1024x768. Even with a 1920x1200 desktop, a 1024x768 web page takes up more of my desktop than I think a single web page deserves. Horizontal scrolling is really a major pain, so I am forced to make my browser wide enough for these pages. If you do a lot of web page design, please try to keep the width of your web pages to 800 pixels or less. Even if people are maximizing their browser on their 1024x768 desktops, you're not really doing them a favor by filling up that entire space. They're probably having a hard time finding the next line when they finish reading a line of text. Even better, you can design your web pages to automatically adjust to the window size.
And if you're one of those people who thinks that your web page is so important that you have to automatically resize the browser window to fill the entire desktop, be advised that while I oppose the death penalty, I make an exception for people who engage in this practice.
Today's topic is web pages that keep getting wider. I've always believed that a computer monitor should hold as much content as possible. As I get older, my brain holds less information. Well, actually it holds more, but much of it is not really useful in everyday life. For some reason, my boss has never asked me to recite the lyrics of Horse Latitudes from memory. But when he does, I'm really going to impress him. Anyway, the best way to have more information ready for immediate access is to have it on my computer monitor. That means I need as many pixels as possible. Ever since the first 3270 displays on the mainframe computers in the 1970s, I've always insisted on having a display with the maximum possible amount of content. These days, I refuse to work with a laptop with less than 1600x1200 resolution. My desktop computer at home (a Dell XPS Gen 5 if you're interested) has a 1920x1200 display. I now wish I had waited a few more months and saved up a couple thousand dollars more so I could have a 3007FPW display with 2560x1600 resolution. I typically have lots of windows scattered around my desktop, so I can keep an eye on all of them. However, my way of doing business seems to be rather atypical. Most users seem only interested in big type. They want to see fonts so big, the characters look like they were written with a crayon. Since they don't know how to adjust the font size, they go for the largest display possible with the lowest resolution possible. In most cases, this means 1024x768. If they want to get more than two words of text per line, that means they really need to maximize their browser window to fill the whole desktop.
So what is happening now is that authors of web pages are optimizing their pages for a browser at 1024x768. Even with a 1920x1200 desktop, a 1024x768 web page takes up more of my desktop than I think a single web page deserves. Horizontal scrolling is really a major pain, so I am forced to make my browser wide enough for these pages. If you do a lot of web page design, please try to keep the width of your web pages to 800 pixels or less. Even if people are maximizing their browser on their 1024x768 desktops, you're not really doing them a favor by filling up that entire space. They're probably having a hard time finding the next line when they finish reading a line of text. Even better, you can design your web pages to automatically adjust to the window size.
And if you're one of those people who thinks that your web page is so important that you have to automatically resize the browser window to fill the entire desktop, be advised that while I oppose the death penalty, I make an exception for people who engage in this practice.
