Screen Width

For a future release, could you consider allowing the pages to expand to fill the whole width of the screen? As a web designer, I know it is much easier to deal with fixed width pages. But I think it is worth the effort to make the pages flexible. It seems like a waste to have a nice big monitor with a high-res video card and only use two-thirds of the available space.
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Bob M.

i think jeff was trying to cater to his site stats. i know that 93% of the people that visit my site use 1024x768 as there monitor resolution while the other 7% are in eithier 800x600, 1152x864 or 1280x1024. so im sure jeff's stat's show something very similar since this site generates more hits then mine does.

1024x768 seems to be what most people are using these days and in that resolution it really takes up a good portion of the screen. i agree that in higher resolutions there is alot of space left on the side, but the site still looks great, and im even guilty of using the fixed width for my sites.

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John
Albany Entertainment
http://albany.n3.net
Great Escape Online Guide Coming Soon!
*** This post was edited by CalvinJ23 1/31/2003 11:18:46 AM ***

Even those of us with bigger desktops (1600x1200 at work, 1920x1440 at home) don't really care about "Wider" sites anyway. I use those resolutions so that I can see multiple windows, or for large images, NOT so that I can just make a big window that's annoying to read across.

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--Greg, aka Oat Boy
My page
"Friendship -- more lasting than love, more legal than stalking."

Allow me to repost this again...

Regarding the width... I've been involved in more usability studies than I care to mention, and while I'm sure some of you will never be reasoned with over it, controlling the width is a good and right thing to do. Why? Read on...

Remember newspapers? Those things they used to send to your house, news printed on cheap paper? Those pages are more than a foot wide. However, you may notice that they choose to break up the text into really narrow columns. Why do they do that?

Well, going back to college and newspaper production 101 (OK, there wasn't such a course, but they did teach it somewhere along the line), the narrow columns are there because it's a lot easier for the eye to follow shorter lines.

For years no one in the Web world seemed to care about that, myself included. Then, at a previous job, we were involved in a usability study where, sure enough, we were testing our own news content online. What we learned was that people were irritated with reading online because they'd lose their place. It was especially bad for long paragraphs (which is common in the forums, unfortunately). When we restricted the width of the text, those problems went away.

So that's why dynamic width tables are bad for text content.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - Sillynonsense.com
"The world rotates to The Ultra-Heavy Beat!" - KMFDM

OK, I see your point. I've never had trouble with long lines of text, but if most people do, then you have to go with the narrow format.

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Bob M.

I'm just glad Jeff didn't do what Microsoft did with their knowledge base. Lord Almighty what were they thinking? http://support.microsoft.com/
(or am I the only one who gets unbelieveably tiny text in the main window on that site...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

RideMan: simply click View » Text Size in the menu.

For me, it's fine, even with my 1280x1024 resolution because they include a lot of bold text, list bulleting, etc. so I never lose my place.

Edit: At least, that's on Internet Explorer for Windows. I'm not sure exactly what you're using.

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The Jet Coaster ROARS!
Will Johansson
*** This post was edited by The Jet Coaster 1/31/2003 7:22:39 PM ***

I guess my only suggestion on the width issue is to maybe do something with the free space on the sides that those of us running our monitors at higher resolution see. Also, I am used to the wider columns, so this will take some getting used to. Some content on each side may help with that. The content being more links, more news, heck, I don't know. I'm just not used to it being so narrow.

Sorry to complain Jeff. I think you do a great job, although there are a few things I may not like about the designs of your sites. Keep up the good work though, as those minor annoyances do little to mess up the great sites you have put together for us coaster lovers and CP fans.

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Avalanch Run - My first Roller Coaster.
Magnum XL-200 - The BEST Roller Coaster!

What, you want the site to look like http://www.macosxhints.com or something? :)

(BTW: The problem I had with the Microsoft site was apparently specific to Opera. I had to bump the magnification up to 160% before it was even apparent that there was any text on that screen...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.
(changed URL...I had forgotten the all-important X)
*** This post was edited by RideMan 2/1/2003 3:57:39 PM ***