All the people I've read have been cooing over the new NYTimes.com design, but.. I don't like it. I don't think the world is ready for 1000 pixel wide Web pages. I get complaints from clients if I work on something and it turns out at 850 pixels wide, because they're running at 800x600 or whatever. What's more, those of us with higher resolutions don't necessarily run our browsers at large sizes. Mine tends to be around 1000 pixels, but I have a widescreen display. Secondly, check out all those columns and all that clutter. It reminds me of the ICQ homepage back in the day. I don't know where to begin and/or why to look at the stuff around the edges. I'd say the BBC News site gets the whole column thing right, but the new NY Times site misses the mark for me despite having many improvements in other areas.
Still, it's way better than the hideous Web 2.0 Journal. I mean, just look at it!
Funny - just posted on my own blog the opposite comment. You should have your clients use their website traffic analysis tools to check what screen resolution their users have - you might be surprised at the percentage at 1024x768. Or maybe you'll find validation that their users are mostly at 800x600. But remember the clients themselves aren't the target customers.
Posted by: Dan Entin at April 5, 2006 04:06 AMIt's not just them though, I personally find it too wide too (or, more accurately, it has too many columns, making it hard to 'scan').
That said, many clients are old-school and it's not as simple as telling them that, alas. Besides, I think along the lines that if so many clients whine about that screen resolution, then how many of their customers are also using nasty 15" CRTs at 800x600? The actual demographic may not be large in terms of the world, but UK businesses are a long way behind the US in this area (and the likes of us), so it's always good to tread carefully. Yes, I know of clients who use Netscape 4(!!)
Posted by: Peter Cooper at April 5, 2006 11:30 AM"What's more, those of us with higher resolutions don't necessarily run our browsers at large sizes"
Exactly, and this is why I still design for 600x800 even though it hurts. If you have too much stuff to put in that area of screen, you usually have too much stuff anyway. I personally have a width of 1600 pixels on my monitor, but I like running several small browser windows at once. The only thing I run full screen are movies.
Posted by: Dave at April 5, 2006 03:17 PMReturn to the homepage.
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