[thelist] Page width and good web design

[Shawn K. Quinn]

On 2004 June 29, Tuesday 05:15, Jason Handby wrote:
> I have a colleague who is proposing to revamp the design of a website
> to make the page 1024 pixels across.

Incredibly poor idea.

> My strong feeling is that the new design is very difficult to scan and
> read, because it's just too wide. 

You have an uncannily on-target gut feeling.

> I've read a reasonable number of online murmurings that tend to 
> support that view, but I'm having problems finding any definitive
> research...

Numerous postings to the Usenet newsgroup 
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html by such people as Alan Flavell, 
Jukka Korpela, Warren Steel, and I'm not sure who else going back over 
the years, but it's been posted time or time again and is probably in 
the FAQ that the best screen resolution to make pages for is "no one 
resolution in particular". Also do a search for "this page optimized 
for arguing with customers" or some variation thereof, I have no idea 
what the URL is.

> Can someone point me in the direction of good research and
> information? Also, if any of you have strong views one way or the
> other I'd be interested in hearing them.

Web sites should be made to be read and used by people on all various 
browsing situations, not for one screen resolution on desktop PCs 
running Windows at the expense of other browsing situations.

That's a pretty strong viewpoint so you may need to dilute it with an 
equal quantity of water...

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn