Size matters
Size matters very much in blog design. There’s a constant battle between having enough space on the page and making sure all your readers can access your content.
It’s the age old browser width conundrum. Do you design for a minimum width of 800 pixels, 1024 pixels, 1280 pixels, or do you go liquid? Liquid is great in theory but creating a layout that can scale all the way up to some of the bigger resolutions is tricky, especially if you use a lot of images in your posts.
800 pixels wide has been the set in stone figure to maximize compatibility for a long time and many designers still swear that it is the only way to go. It keeps older screens happy but has a tendency to look a little skinny on bigger screens. However, fitting a modern blog design into 800 pixels isn’t easy. Sure, it’s possible, but why squeeze everything in?
Upstart Blogger doesn’t fit into 800 pixels. It needs around 1024 pixels to work without horizontal scroll bars. My google analytics tells me that the majority of people are reading this site at a width of 1280 pixels. What it doesn’t tell me, however, is how many people are put off because it won’t fit on their screen.
This wasn’t a conscious decision since I inherited the current design. But, it doesn’t worry me and the next incarnation of Upstart Blogger (coming very soon) will be the same width. Why? Because the audience of this website tend to be computer savvy and will almost certainly be running at a contemporary screen resolution capable of displaying the site easily.
It’s important to get the right amount of information across in an uncluttered and unjammed way. And for that you need space.
Don’t forget that different blogs have different audiences. It’s just a case of matching the size of your design to your intended audience.
Anyway, I’ve shown you mine now you show me yours. What size is your blog and how does it suit your audience?
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Ashley Morgan is a UK jazz trumpet player and owner of independent record label 447 Records.
Ashley Morgan is the trumpet player with Enormous.
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I had always designed in 800×600 because that just seemed to be what everyone was using at the time I started designing.
I view using 1280, and my site looks like there’s about an inch and half of space on either side. And I like that. I don’t want my design to take up the whole screen because I like the ‘white space’.
This site actually looks like it has the same amount of ‘white space’ on either side (that is, if you were to give the background a different color). And I like the layout of it. It’s not all squished together which is really nice.
I think 1024 is about the minimum now for designing unless you have a really old monitor that can’t go past 800 without looking bad (like my parent’s monitor).
Can’t wait to see the new design.
I’m finally being brave and beginning to create designs that require resolutions of 1024px wide or higher. However, my monitor is incapable of displaying a resolution higher than 1024×640, and it really irritates me that many sites won’t even fit onto that. Perhaps I’m a bit hypocritical.
Personally, I find that height matters more than width. Much of my screen space is taken up by toolbars, thanks to my inability to resist Firefox extensions, and I’m sure many others do too. But a number of sites, particularly flash- and frame-happy ones rely on visitors’ monitors being a certain height.
Just about all of my paid work is for an industry who’s users are largely not high tech, so I still stick mostly to the 800px width. Correct me if I’m wrong, but google analytics only gives you screen resolutions, not the actual browser size they are viewing the page at, and many people dont browse full screen. Almost 49% of visitors to my busiest client are at a screen resolution of 1024×768 so i play it safe and stick to 800px max. Thats where interesting background images can be a nice addition. For my personal sites I vent by busting out beyond 800px…feel so goooood :P
The screen on my powerbook is 1440, my hubby’s 1680. At work the mantra is that it has to fit the smallest screen but be fluid to the largest one – I HATE this approach because having 5 words compact and intelligently placed with white space around them versus torn apart to full width is much more interesting and stronger in the message; thus the thought of “width has to be always fully used” is idiotic. To keep most happy I often design for 900 wide but then add interesting stuff to the background behind the main page (which does not have to be always centered at all for this to work), so that it looks also interesting to people on larger screens.
I started with a width of around 1000px which was based on a widened K2 theme.
The problem was that I just started added more ‘gunk’ to the side bars. Initially I wanted more space between elements… im a white space freak. But find web design very restrictive in this sense.
So my 3 columns ended up being a very crowded and frankly, messy and untidy 3 columns, which did nothing for the main content.
So I chose long and hard about what I wanted. A nice looking site free of clutter and adverts or a more compact widened site with adverts and more besides.
So I am back to a simple 2 column minus all ad’s. Will see how this goes as I am creating a classified page which will be where all the affiliates stuff go, much like a newspaper. The adverts are there if people want to look at them rather than forcing them down someone’s throat.
See personally, I much prefer visiting a site that is add free or at least very sensitive to how many and what type of adverts they have. I don’t like buyibng magazines because of this advert culture. Sure, people need to make money, but it’s so driven nowadays… the main focus seems to be always 2nd fiddle.
So when creating a Blog, I think its important to retain the roots of how it all began. Blogs are not really blogs anymore, they are more just complex dynamic web sites… with added comments and editorials.
So for me, I am now very aware that it’s too easy to follow the crowd and loose the real message of a blog, a web log. Not a adlog.
Sure, things move on and change and evolve, but I don’t like the way a lot of blogs are changing.
I will be trying very hard to keep my Blog’s at a level where they are friendly and ‘approachable’.
And this means for me keeping widths in proportion to the content. I will be all up for a 1200px wide 3 column blog if it contains more relevant material than adverts and clutter. WHich is what I am working on at the moment. A wide semi-fixed/fluid site, with multiple formate pages ranging from 1 column to 3 depending on content.
This will be keeping in mind with standard resolutions, so the important content is easily accessible and any ‘adverts’ will be placed far out of harms way.
Also creating a SUPER footer with a lot of the stuff you usually find down the sides, to create a really open and white space friendly experience.
That’s the plan anyway. :0)
Graham
ImJustCreative
Blog & Web Ramblings from ‘my’ Gutter.
Graham