Why are website re-designs always worse...

[trancejeremy]

With the exception of here of course.

But in the last week two of the sites I frequently visited, Siliconera (a video gaming blog) and Viva El Birdos (a baseball Cardinals blog) had redesigns. In both cases, they went from a variable width design (where it expanded to fill the screen) to a fixed width design (which means all the text is now in the middle 1/3 of my screen, since I have a widescreen monitor).

I've probably ranted about this before (shortly after getting my monitor, discovering that some websites did this). But it seems like more and more sites are moving in that direction, and I don't know why. Things seemed so much nicer when the text was all over the monitor. I thought widescreen monitors were getting more common, not less? Or is it designed to work better with Iphones and other gizmos?

 

[Relique du Madde]

It's because right now too many people are starting to cater to either the elitist bloggers, the youtubers or the myspace/facebook/community-site crowd. As a result, instead of breaking out of the box and experimenting with site design, too many web-designers are trying to make things become as grid based as possible because of the "need" to place rss feeds onto a page.

The sad thing is that there has been so many improvements to the way you could display a webpage that it should be possible to experiment with layout in such a way that page doesn't appear too grid based without having to resort to using flash for everything on a site*. Of course, the problem is that to do so you need to know how to program in multiple web based languages..




* I remember seeing one flash website which theoretically scrolls forever without running out of content to place on the screen.

 

[azhrei_fje]

There are generally two or three reasons:

1. Graphics design that doesn't take page width into account.

Many designs will have fancy graphics scattered about the page, but instead of modularizing the graphics so that some portion of it can be repeated up to the full width of the window, the graphics runs completely across the page as one unit. I think part of this is because...

2. Laziness on the part of the developer. Face it, the graphics design in step one takes more time and either the designer doesn't want to do it or the site owner doesn't want to pay for the time.

Let me be clear: I'm not saying that building a variable width site is easy. It's not. But it can be done. Our homeowner's association is putting our web site redesign out for bid and I've made sure that a variable width design is part of the project. I'm curious to see what excuses the developers come up with when they submit a proposal with a fixed width design.

3. Cost to the site owner. As mentioned in the last paragraph, some site owners don't want to spend the extra dough to "do it right".

4. Lack of knowledge. Maybe the site owner doesn't understand what is being proposed or doesn't even think about it? In that case, the design comes back fixed width (because it's easier) and it's too late to change it without a lot of additional expense.

Maybe there are others. I don't know. But if I remember, I'll come back here and post on the results of our web site project as I mentioned above.

 

[Ranger REG]

I thought widescreen monitors were getting more common, not less? Or is it designed to work better with Iphones and other gizmos?

Last year, I bought my first LCD monitor since my old CRT monitor died. It's not widescreen.

 

[Thanee]

Last year, I bought my first LCD monitor since my old CRT monitor died. It's not widescreen.

I also bought a non-wide LCD for my first last year, but that doesn't make it any less true, that the widescreen monitors are becoming much more common.

In fact, there are only few non-wide LCDs available/produced these days. The vast majority is widescreen now.

Bye
Thanee

 

[ssampier]

A fixed layout will look similar across most monitor types. With a liquid layout, the designer cannot truly control the experience. In addition, there are some usability issues with extremely long line lengths. You can work around this with maximum text lengths, but few go through the effort. So many designers will go for ease of use, rather than catering to the high-end user.

This will change gradually, especially with sites that dynamically add an extra column for wide monitors.

For now, don't maximize your browser window.

 

[azhrei_fje]

I would like to see "em" used for sizing text boxes instead of "px". For me, that would solve many of the issues I have with fixed-width sites.

As you pointed out, there are some things that can't be easily resized and still look good. Flash and some Java applets are examples. But flash is the scourge of the Earth and Java applets aren't very popular either; in fact, I usually have flash turned off for most sites I visit.

The thing that bothers me even more than the fixed width window are sites that blast sound at me without asking me first! My wife will leave her browser window open and leave her desk only to have run back to it in order to kill the web page that has started streaming audio to her without asking! Ugh!

 

[ssampier]

Flash ads are the devil.

 

[Redrobes]

Flash ads are the devil.

Yup, so get some serious exorcism going with forefox + noscript extension (Adblock too !)

Yes many sites are lazy azhrei just about summed it up. The one that intrigues me is the WotC site where it boots into the site at full screen but when the java / CSS template, or whatever it is, kicks in it shrinks.

BTW. I use a 4:3 monitor too but its a 1600x1200 type and some of the sites do get a bit thin in the middle.

 

[Relique du Madde]

The thing that bothers me even more than the fixed width window are sites that blast sound at me without asking me first! My wife will leave her browser window open and leave her desk only to have run back to it in order to kill the web page that has started streaming audio to her without asking! Ugh!

Midi... how I hated you.... and how much I hate those idiots who decide to hide mute buttons or note even imbed them. I wish some programmer out there would have the common sense to put up 45 second delay before the music begins and offer the user the option or disabling the music before it starts.


I think I'll do that on my portfolio site when I start building it out...