Inspired by fusoya’s thread about his mammoth new widescreen monitor I started to wonder why no websites have incorporated a design layout optimized for a 16:9 screen. For years I worked for Dot-coms and the desperate struggle was to get as much info and advertising “above the fold”. At the time web development was a somewhat time consuming process and a lot of effort was put into getting the one layout to work for the most possible users and the structures were basically static as a result.
Today things are a little different. With style sheets and some of the new dynamic web development applications (that I’m no longer really familiar with) not to mention database driven dynamic content web design is much less static and the layouts are commonly generated on the fly.
So, now that widescreen monitors and dynamic content are common why haven’t more websites been developed to capitalize on this new layout? I understand that there are still probably a majority of users who are on 4:3 monitors but you’d think that there would be enough people on that 16:9 screen to encourage designers to try an capitalize on all that “above the fold” space wasted.
Most websites these days when rolling out a new version institute a soft roll-out in which the user has an option of viewing in the “traditional” format or the “new Beta” layout. This is the dynamic content/style sheets at work. It’s exactly the same information laid out differently on the fly. Why aren’t websites offering this now with an option for a 16:9 widescreen layout and one for the conventional 4:3? Those users using a 16:9 screen (who one presumes are the early adopters and affluent folks that advertisers covet) would be a subset of users and impressions that the websites could market to advertisers making the small investment seem worthwhile to maintain the two layouts.
Anyways, what’s the hangup? Am I missing some logic here? Look at Yahoo.com and ESPN.com and you have the two of the highest traffic sites on the web and even on my dinky 19" 4:3 monitor there’s an inch of wasted space on either side of the screen I can only imagine what it would be like on a 26" widescreen.
I know that most websites are designed to a specific resolution, not a aspect ratio, but would it not make sense to have a second wider resolution available? In a somewhat related question, why haven’t designers gotten around the fixed width resolution on their pages? Things haven’t improved on that front since 2001.
Just my 2 cents, but as a website designer, you (unfortunately) have to base your site on the lowest common denominator when creating the site - unless you don’t care if most people can see it correctly.
You have to consider average screen size, average Internet connection speed, is it IE or Firefox or whatever and which version they have, is it PC or Mac…and try to make them all happy.
A large screen version might be nice for you, but most people without a wide screen really, really hate scrolling from left to right to see the information on a website.
But I don’t want to see double-wide web pages. I bought a large monitor so I can do other things while viewing traditional size web pages, and I suspect that I’m pretty typical of a non-technical widescreen user. If I was largely devoting my attention to only web browsing then I could have stuck with my 4:3 monitor.
I’m not saying that there aren’t some circumstances in which a double-wide page would be useful, but at this point I doubt it would be worth the time and cost to implement for the handful of people that would use it.
This used to be the case, and before websites were as dynamic as they are now this was a technical limitation. Nowadays webpages are rendered locally in such a way that multiple versions of the same content are common and fairly low overhead. We should be able to design for the lowest common denominator and the early adopters and allow people to set the way it is rendered as a preference stored in a cookie.
The beauty of the proposal is that you could still use your non-maximized browser windows by simply choosing a 4:3 preference. Those of us who like browsing with a maximized window could choose to do so as well.
Incidentally, I think part of the reason most widescreen users browse the way you do and think that it’s the optimal solution is because there simply are no widescreen format websites to make you do any different.
Many of the news websites out there are starved for screen space with the multimedia aspect of reporting these days. CNN, ESPN and newpapers are trying to squeeze video, photos and headlines onto the “front page” and aren’t having much success because of the antiquated “800x600” layout they are slaves to. With dynamic content is it really that much more expensive to have two layouts? Yahoo has it’s old version and it’s Beta now without any trouble. Allowing for a 16:9 experience adds value so you’d think the cost would be offset.
There is quite a shift towards fluid layouts - that is, pages that will re-flow their contents to fit the available width. It’s not easy to design them to work at all possible scales though.
Because design “rules” state that it’s better for paragraphs to be narrow, rather than stretched so wide that words disappear offscreen that you have to scroll back and forth to read properly.
I have seen some sites use a wide thumbnail gallery that you have to scroll sideways for, but that’s very much the exception, and goes against popular expectation, so isn’t as user-friendly.
GuanoLad nailed it. As a web designer, I was thanking God when the company I worked for decided the “lowest” resolution we needed to support was 1024 X 768. I had a few hundred more pixels to work with to make my design prettier. But these new monitors that are 1900 or 1680 pixels across are TOO wide for websites. You could load up all those pixels with information, but it would be far too much for people to take in. Paragraphs would be stretched out and hard to read, information would be lost, hard to see.
On my widescreen monitor, even with fluid layouts, I resize my browser window to constrict it to more-or-less 1000 pixels. I think most people do the same.
Consider a website that fills every pixel, top to bottom, left to right on a maximized 1900 X 1200 pixel monitor. That would be one ugly, hard to navigate, hard to read website.
Well, this rather excellent* site attempts to use it (no tables, but the same sort of thing is done with CSS) - the middle column stretches and the two at the side don’t.
But as I say, it’s difficult to do well (and I don’t claim to have achieved it). I tried using a layout whereby blocks of content would double up next to each other when it got to a certain width (as opposed to one block per column just stretching and stretching) - it’s difficult to do without breaking something, or having some things flow while others stay in column sequence, so I gave up and just went for a stretchy middle column.
And that’s probably the biggest tension of style there is in web design - the conflict between making the website to look the way you want it to look, and making it work best within a wide range of client environments.
On the one hand, you want to stamp it with your individuality, on the other hand, it would be good if you could focus on content and let the visitor’s browser handle displaying it in the best way possible within the constraints of the local resources.
So it’s always going to be a bit of a compromise - and some sites tend toward one end or other of the scale, but the middle ground isn’t necessarily brilliant either.
*Yes, it’s my own site. I know it’s not excellent.
We’ve always given our clients the choice between having a liquid vs. static layout. I’m not sure this is something “new.” Sometimes they come back with a design to which I say “no way, we’re not making this liquid, sorry” but in most cases I can accommodate whichever way they want. In either case, they also have to pick out a default “lowest resolution” for their customer base - either 800 or 1024. For static layouts I design it so that it stays at their lowest resolution and for liquid I design it so that it doesn’t horizontal scroll at that resolution.
Liquid layout is very hard but if you do it enough you get good at it.
As for widescreen Web sites…I agree with what everyone else has said so far. I just don’t think of the Web as a “widescreen medium.” The Web is akin to paper, not moving pictures. Moving pictures are landscape, books are still portrait.
Time = money. When your client can barely understand the difference between a web browser and an email client and likely have a lower resolution on their work computer monitor, they don’t care and will be less likely to approve the time for the additional design. Making an additional style isn’t as quick and easy as you think - it doesn’t take that much less time for another layout.
The more clicks a user has to do to get to their destination the sooner they’ll get sick of it and leave. You want to give the user as few obstacles as possible before getting to the content. It’s the same principle as not having a splash page.
Dopers like you are not an average web user - I understand what you’re thinking, and there’s a lot of things you have to do for the average user that I hate having to do, but them’s the breaks.
I’m not suggesting that websites be made to stretch. That’s simply not going to work. Instead I’m picturing a website that has an option to display it’s content in 3 columns with fixed widths like ESPN.com and Yahoo.com or to display it in 5 or 6 fixed width columns. Those additional columns could simply bring the below-the-fold information to the top-right, offer larger embedded videos or extra ad real estate.
Websites like CNN and BBC are able customize their content by requiring their visitors to select their continent and language on their first entry, why would having them select a format be any more taxing?
6 columns would be way too much to have on the screen at any given time. Your eyes would have nowhere to go or concentrate on. Unlike traditional newspapers, “real estate” on a website is totally free, and putting information on 2 or 3 pages, even when it fits one 1, is free to do and easier to read. So why not?
Also, splitting that content onto multiple pages and forcing the user to click through them increases page views and their advertising revenue.
And from a practical standpoint, designing a 6 column website as opposed to a 2 or 3 column is significantly more difficult. Those “extra” columns would essentially need to be designed to fit either layout (so the columns couldn’t change width based on content that was loaded into them), or the extra columns/graphics would need alternate versions created for each layout. The CSS is not the only thing that would need to change, various HTML containers and code would also need modified extensively for large and dynamically created websites.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. But it would be an incredible time consuming process to build and maintain that would benefit no one. The website owner would get less ad revenue and fewer page loads and have to spend a ton of time and money setting it up. The website viewer would get an ugly website that is hard to read and navigate with an additional step to set it up.
Why would 6 columns be too much? CNN has 4 stacked areas in it’s left column and 9 stacked areas in it’s right column. That’s not too much information on it’s front page, and scrolling down causes more issues in flow than scanning your eyes left to right. I think that’s a dismissive argument. And web real-estate is not free. Bandwidth costs and making users click multiple times uses more than a single larger page would. Also, the “cost” is in the amount of real estate that can be used for advertising. Dead space on a webpage is wasted revenue and is a lost opportunity.
I haven’t studied the web advertising business model in a while but I’m sure ads displayed on the home page above the fold still command a price an order of magnitude higher than anything one click inside. Being able to have 3 impression on the home page above the fold is much more valuable than having 1 add above the fold on 3 linked pages.
I’m not convinced that it’s a huge amount of extra labor. Using the CNN website as a example, they have 13 distinct sections that are of a fixed width. How difficult would it be to simply position them 5 across and 3 down instead of 2 across and 7 down? Certainly having a modular website that displays in multiple orientations would change the way you design content, and it wouldn’t suit every websites goal, but I can’t help but think that increasing the amount or usable real estate is a fruitful endeavor.
I don’t believe I’m being dismissive. Try opening Photoshop and grabbing the entire CNN.com homepage, then changing the layout to fit a 1900 X 1200 resolution. It will be very hard to read with no “headline” story, because the focus will be all over the page instead of the “main” content.
Bandwidth costs are nominal compared to the amount of time would be required to set up the system you’re proposing. My point was that in “traditional” media like magazines and newspapers, they have to utilize all available space in order to not waste paper and money, increasing printing and shipping costs. On the internet, “pages” are unlimited and usually just based on a handful of templates set up to serve them.
There’s many variables involved in internet advertising, and “above the fold” isn’t usually one of the stipulations. Having 4 ads visible at any time definitely does decrease the value of all the ads, however. As it should.
Well then I suspect I can’t say anything to convince you. I will say that I’ve been developing websites as an amateur for about 13 years, and as a professional for 6. What you are proposing is at LEAST twice as much labor because you are essentially laying out a website 2 times. It is probably more than twice the labor, however, because the content will need to remain the same regardless of the layout, and this is a tricky maneuver trying to keep everything legible and consistent across the layouts, making sure ALL content (including ads) is consistent across each version. The thought of a client proposing I do this makes my head hurt.
Dismissive may be the wrong word. I just think that you are assuming that all users share the same perception, personally I think I’d find that wider layout more readable than some websites where most of the content falls below the fold once you render the advertising, masthead and navigation tabs. I’m not arguing that websites should have a width of 1900 pixels, just that designing a 768 width layout which is smaller than almost every monitor in the world only seems needlessly restrictive and that adding a second 1280 pixel width orientation would accommodate enough users to make it profitable.
Bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper so it’s not a huge consideration, but the lost opportunity cost is a different matter as web advertising revenues go up.
There would be cost in the design, and I agree it would probably be twice as expensive. However, that’s a one-time cost. Once a template is laid out effectively and smartly the upkeep should be identical since the content would be customized to fit the modules not the orientation and those modules would be the same in either version. Those extra ad revenues would continue to add value for the life of the design.
Do you disagree that a website that is able to incorporate 1 extra large rectangle ad on the landing page without losing content is going to generate substantially more profit than a standard page with 1 rectangle ad? If that argument is valid it seems that the debate rests on weighing the value of that extra ad versus the cost in the initial design. I’m not sure how to accurately measure those two things, but don’t you think it’d be worth investigating?
the 800 pixel wide layout is already a thing of the past. Most websites these days are about 1000 pixels across. This is already pretty much the upper limit to how wide websites should be, but I’ll give you that 1280 isn’t much of a stretch (or much of an improvement) from the current 1000 pixel standard.
Not really, though. The extra columns would presumably also be dynamic, so if an advertiser wanted to throw in a tower ad as opposed to a small rectangle ad, the layout would suddenly break or become ugly across one or both layouts. The content filling all available slots would need to be more-or-less the same exact size, requiring extra efforts for copyrighting and image editing, where most sites are built for dynamic content in all slots. Also, anytime any change is made to content or layout (which is frequent even in template based sites), it will need to be made twice on each layout. Also, any time colors or CSS-referenced images change, they will need to be modified in 2 separate CSS files, possibly in 2 template files, and then both versions of the site will need to be checked in all available browsers to make sure they look okay. This is literally twice the work with even minor changes and therefore, twice the cost.
I guess I shouldn’t have brought up the advertising angle as it sort of confuses the issue. Are you implying that all the extra screen real estate would be used for advertising, and the larger layout would simply have more ad space? In this case, why would anyone use it? To see more ads cluttering up the screen?
And if its not being used for advertising, why would the people want to even include it as an option?
And if you’re implying that different ads will be shown at possibly a different value on the larger site, well, that’s even more work to build and maintain.
My presumption is that it would be used for both. The extra columns would have content and ads blended just like the third column on most news websites already do. CNN is a good example here. The 3rd column with the Video content and Java ad and Google ads could be replicated on the left of the main story column incorporating the polls and other user generated content.
Firstly - they do? I’ve never been asked any such thing when going to CNN or BBC sites. And ones which do, such as ESPN, REALLY piss me off. Hint: piss people off just before they see your advert - bad idea.
Secondly - look at all that wasted white space at www.google.com. Morons. How could they possibly make money? They look like Yahoo did in about 2001. Fill it all with adverts, then they’ll make money.
Thirdly - people read vertically. Watch people reading a broadsheet newspaper. How many spread it out to see the whole page, and how many clearly home in on one topic? Centuries of work has gone into laying things out in books and papers in the ways people find suitable, ignore them at your peril.
Heehee!