[thelist] Whitespace on site

[Julia Frizzell]

I was browsing the web today, looking at some author's sites, when I 
came across this one:

http://www.juliaquinn.com

I noted that the page had a lot of whitespace on the bottom and in 
looking at the source (Dreamweaver), I noted that the designer had 
specifically put whitespace in at the bottom, using a white-pixel 
with the height taken to what I thought were extremes (1000).

So I figured I'd email the designer, and ask about it. Figured maybe 
it was a mistake, maybe it wasn't. I'd find out.

I got a reply. In fact, it was *not* a mistake, but designed that way 
because of the "New" link under the author's photo, which leads to a 
lower section of the page. They had put in the 1000 height pixel so 
that the anchor tag would jump to the top left, rather than the 
middle of the page. The designer did admit that 1000 was probably too 
much, that they could probably manage with 300.

This surprised me, even though it made some sense. I personally hate 
sites that have a ton of white space on the bottom of their page ... 
always think it's poorly designed. If I was designing the site, I'd 
move the "New" link to its own page to solve the problem, but maybe 
that's just me.

Thoughts? Does this happen often? I don't always click on links from 
the main page of a site, but I always scroll down to the bottom 
(afraid I'll miss something, I guess). And wasted space just bugs the 
heck out of me.

I don't know if this warrants a tip or not. If it does, I'll owe.

-- 
-------------------------------
Julia Frizzell
julia_frizzell at brown.edu
glyneth at sfad.org
http://www.sfad.org/julia
http://www.theblackroad.org
"Insert pithy quote here."