Where is Widescreen Web Browsing?

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Ramboss

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Topic # 86222 4-Jul-2011 08:15

This has probably been talked about, but i wanted to have a moan. With the exception of a few websites (including this one) Most websites are not in widescreen format, eg Trademe, Stuff, and IGN. and that is to name but a few. Most if not All laptops, pc monitors and even tv's that surf the web are 16:9 or a similar widescreen format. So WHY are all these websites still in a 4:3 format. It is terrible to look at when using a 1080p laptop monitor, and half of the screen is either blank or advertising.

When will these popular sites get with the times and offer 16:9 support like geekzone does?

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836 posts

Ultimate Geek
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Reply # 489015 4-Jul-2011 08:27

1024x768 is the most popular screen resolution, still after all these years! So if you make a website to default to widescreen, half of it will disappear with the most poular resolution. Have a look at the visitor stats to one of my sites here which shows the screen resolutions people are using:

timmmay

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Reply # 489017 4-Jul-2011 08:34

Just because you have a widescreen monitor that doesn't mean everyone does. On the web you cater for the common case and aim for compatibility. Not using the full width of the screen causes no issues. Making people scroll sideways means people will leave the website almost immediately.

It's possible to build to a variable width screen, but it's a bit tricker, especially when you have to take into account a lot of different web browsers and platforms.

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minigopher17

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Reply # 489020 4-Jul-2011 08:41

May I suggest you look into fixed width versus fluid width. Geekzone is fluid width meaning it fills up the whole width of the browser no matter how wide you make it. Most sites are fixed width because then the designer/developer has more control over how things are displayed to the user. Unfortunately there are still too many people with low resolution monitors, and you have to cater for the majority. However, if people who commissioned websites to be developed wanted to spend more money at their website they could have clever techniques where there are different CSS files styling the site dependent on the browser size, anywhere from mobile phone width through to those 32" Mac screens.

So it's a money thing, everyone needs to upgrade their monitors, or spend more on website development - then everyone would be happy.

jbard

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Reply # 489045 4-Jul-2011 09:33

minigopher17: May I suggest you look into fixed width versus fluid width. Geekzone is fluid width meaning it fills up the whole width of the browser no matter how wide you make it. Most sites are fixed width because then the designer/developer has more control over how things are displayed to the user. Unfortunately there are still too many people with low resolution monitors, and you have to cater for the majority. However, if people who commissioned websites to be developed wanted to spend more money at their website they could have clever techniques where there are different CSS files styling the site dependent on the browser size, anywhere from mobile phone width through to those 32" Mac screens.

So it's a money thing, everyone needs to upgrade their monitors, or spend more on website development - then everyone would be happy.

+1 this pretty much sums it up.

mattRSK

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Reply # 489049 4-Jul-2011 09:35

I prefer it not as widescreen. This way with my monitor I can have two pages side by side. Helps when filling in bank accounts etc.

jbard

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Reply # 489050 4-Jul-2011 09:39

If it really bugs you, you could always just zoom in and everything usually scales just fine.

freitasm

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Reply # 489054 4-Jul-2011 09:59

One very important thing to consider is that each web site profile is different. We have a large number of Chrome and Firefox users, while Trade Me is predominantly Internet Explorer. That's because of the users' demographics.

This what we see at Geekzone right now, with stats based on a 700,000 visits sample over a month:

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dacraka

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Reply # 489068 4-Jul-2011 10:32

jbard:
minigopher17: May I suggest you look into fixed width versus fluid width. Geekzone is fluid width meaning it fills up the whole width of the browser no matter how wide you make it. Most sites are fixed width because then the designer/developer has more control over how things are displayed to the user. Unfortunately there are still too many people with low resolution monitors, and you have to cater for the majority. However, if people who commissioned websites to be developed wanted to spend more money at their website they could have clever techniques where there are different CSS files styling the site dependent on the browser size, anywhere from mobile phone width through to those 32" Mac screens.

So it's a money thing, everyone needs to upgrade their monitors, or spend more on website development - then everyone would be happy.

+1 this pretty much sums it up.

I was going to reply but yes, this is pretty much what I was going to say.
I am a Web Developer and some clients want websites to be displayed exactly the same to every visitor. If you make the website wider depending on the screen resolution, text can drop down, have a different amount of lines of text on a different computer and may look weird etc. This can be catered for, but can take more time, therefore cost more money which website owners don't usually want to spend.

Chainsaw

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Reply # 489151 4-Jul-2011 13:17

Those screen resolution figures - I have a 1920x1200 screen, but never have the browser at full-screen. Do those figures pick up the browser dimensions or screen dimensions? Just curious.

freitasm

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Reply # 489153 4-Jul-2011 13:20

They are screen dimensions.

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webwat

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Reply # 489219 4-Jul-2011 16:02

timmmay: Just because you have a widescreen monitor that doesn't mean everyone does. On the web you cater for the common case and aim for compatibility. Not using the full width of the screen causes no issues. Making people scroll sideways means people will leave the website almost immediately.

It's possible to build to a variable width screen, but it's a bit tricker, especially when you have to take into account a lot of different web browsers and platforms.

Thats exactly right. Its not that hard to build a variable width site as long as you decide which part of the table should be variable and specify the width of other columns. Its more important to complain to web designers who still build sites that can't shrink to smaller sizes needed for mobiles, PDAs and netbooks these days. The old school of web design was to put gifs into tables to hold them open at a minimum size, assuming that users wouldn't resize their browser window. Thats not realistic anymore.

I suspect wide screens are not that popular for desktops yet because some people find them annoying/unnecessary when used as office machines. Anyway, who would want to maximise every window when your screen is big enough to display windows the way they were intended (ie as windows on the screen).

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Behodar

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Reply # 489239 4-Jul-2011 16:24

webwat: Anyway, who would want to maximise every window when your screen is big enough to display windows the way they were intended (ie as windows on the screen).

Gah, don't get me started! We have a webapp here at work that uses JavaScript to open full-screen windows, 3840x1200 in my case, which are then 90% whitespace in such a huge window. Alas the whole thing breaks if you turn JS off for that site.

BurningBeard

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Reply # 489677 5-Jul-2011 15:03

Allow the graphic designer to chime in.

The human eye drops off reading a paragraph (to the next line) after about one and a half alphabets (39 characters to be exact) - we use this rule to calculate when to split a piece of text into columns.

Having text spanning right across the page massively impedes readability. You see this on really poorly done websites where you find yourself highlighting the text just to mark what line you are up to.

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myopinion

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Reply # 489679 5-Jul-2011 15:09

Widescreen is great for the office as it allows you to have two windows / documents open side by side.

kobiak

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Reply # 489690 5-Jul-2011 15:23

BurningBeard: Allow the graphic designer to chime in.

The human eye drops off reading a paragraph (to the next line) after about one and a half alphabets (39 characters to be exact) - we use this rule to calculate when to split a piece of text into columns.

Having text spanning right across the page massively impedes readability. You see this on really poorly done websites where you find yourself highlighting the text just to mark what line you are up to.

+1

It's hard to read geekzone's long forum posts on HD resolution. and it's not only geekzone. A lot of websites with fluid theme suck.

I would rather have a max-width attribute at some point just to make things readable on website than 100% width to main content area.

so I recon trademe is doing alright :)

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