WorldLee

No, this isn’t going to be a perverted posting, not that I wouldn’t post perverted, just… well this isn’t going to be one of them. This post is about the trouble with screen resolution size and website design. As with most Web Developers, I have to decide how big I want my site to appear on the computer screen.

To big, the user has to scroll back and forth to read content, too small and the user sees way too much space around the edges of the site. And monitors are so many different sizes now. We know that users can use Blackberry’s and iPhones all the way to 30-inch monitors (I would love one of those by the way).

Recently I was working on a website prototype for a student run radio show, and was forced to give up my long held belief that you should always design for the smallest commonly used monitor size, which is 8 x 6. But after going around to different sites, including Apple, Microsoft and dozens of others, it’s become clear that they are all choosing a website based on a 10 x 7 site. They don’t even collapse all the way if the site is smaller. So if you don’t have a high resolution monitor, your S.O.L. and will have to scroll back and forth.

I realize that monitors will continue to grow in size, but I suspect that 10 x 7 is the last standard that people will live with for browser sizes. That’s because anything else puts way to much information for any person to read.

After looking at dozens of sites, I’m convinced that most sites have too much information coming at you or flying at you, or blinking at you. They don’t make it clear how to find content and everything ranks as being too important.

In my new design, I made a site that was very simple and elegant and classical while keeping a solid professional feel to it. I even added a few bits of fun to keep it interesting.

I really hope my client likes it as much as I do… but of course, that’s part of the game. He might hate it every bit as much as I love it.