Web Design Size

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313bluegreen

313bluegreen

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Nov 24, 2008
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I was just wondering why a lot of the websites don't use up all of the screen space along the edges. Everytime I see this I am also always wanting the pictures to be larger and sometimes better quality. If you have a WS does your website have to be designed where it doesn't use up all of the screen space? Can your pictures be only a certain size, too?
 
Hey Bluegreen, I was wondering that myself.

Maybe because it loads faster?

But it makes me want to pull the sides out to fill the screen.......seems like it would make the images more easily viewed. I have seen some just today that were so tiny, the image was just a blurr.

But you don't want to over size it either, because no one wants to have to scroll sideways to view the page. I've seen some really nice sites from FC's that are too wide. I made my site myself it's 15" wide.

The tech guys can answer this better but, think it also has to do with the screen width that they think is prodominently used by the public.

I think by now most people have at least a 15" screen. The laptop I'm on now says its a 15.4" (one at shop I think is a 17 or 19".

Maybe Ryan can enlighten us both.

Off subject here, but what is your affiliation with the Florist insdustry? I don't see a website for you, and Brittany Sheet comes up as a linens company. With a degree from Purdue, what do you do in the florist business, just curious.
 
I think the best designs are what is called Liquid design, where a percentage size of the available browswer display area is used.

In other words - the page stretches to accomodate its contents.
 
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Bloomz,
Are you saying that the website automatically expands its width to fill the screen size of its viewer?

If so, why would a TF site I viewed on my 15" screen today not expand to fill the screen? I have seen this happen, not very smoothly but it does happen.

Your information and opinions are valued.
 
Web design sizing is a combination of art and science.

The art perspective is making the design look appealing, functional helping the user accomplish their task.

The science part is based on studies of analytics data, user behaviour, eye tracking, etc. Since the vast majority of users are using screens set to 1024x768 or more, the standard has been to design at up to 1000px wide for the past couple of years. Prior to that it was 760px as users ran screens at 800x600.

Having margins along the sides - typically 10-20% in a liquid design (like FlowerChat) - makes the content more readable for the customer. When the content gets too close to the edge the design appears crowded and becomes challenging to digest.

I just happened to be looking at an FTD site, and it was at 770px wide. Our Strider sites are designed at up to 1000px wide, but we have done a couple at narrower widths.

Hope that helps!

Side note:
I wanted to have a look at Royse City's web site to check on the width and found this:
2008-12-07_2117.png


Interesting how the first listing in the local box is for FTD.com using the Royse City Florist & Gifts name :)

Royse: your site is designed at 1250px - too wide for most screens. Horizontal scrolling is one of the greatest sins of usability :) You also have a big gap at the top, likely caused by the improper placement of a second <head> tag. I'd get that cleared up quickly, to make the user experience better for your customers.

Ryan
 
Ryan, thats weird...I've been online with Google checking my ranking just before posting and that is not the result page I got.

The FTD.com link one is illegal, I am not FTD for almost a year. That result was not showing just minutes ago.

That also occured when Cathy searched from California after Goggle took FTD of me, she called me and said it still showed up as on me for her. That was back in March this year. (FTD I assume put the link back on later)

How can different people/locations of the country get different search results using the same browser and words?

I'll check my site width and see exactly what I did.

Do you really think it's too wide for most people? I know that Erics site you used to have to scroll sideways alot, I think he's changed it some. You know he's always working on it.
 
roysecityfloristand gifts said:
Bloomz,
Are you saying that the website automatically expands its width to fill the screen size of its viewer?

If so, why would a TF site I viewed on my 15" screen today not expand to fill the screen? I have seen this happen, not very smoothly but it does happen.

Your information and opinions are valued.
Click to expand...

No many are liquid, in fact I believe most are still made with fixed width. The standard until the last couple years was to stay under 800 wide - but now most everyone has bigger monitors than 600X800. But with liquid design you set your space you're going to use, usually in a table at a certain setting with pixels if you're static and percentages if you're going liquid.

Teleflora sites seem to be fixed width of 800 pixels.

Liquid design lets the page stretch as needed (I use it) depending on the content. The reason is many of my product images are different sizes (the bigger detail one) and the page has to accomodate the bigger as well as the smaller images and still look sorta ok.

HTH
 
Hey Bloomz, give up that website address so I can check out your style, pretty :hug:please!!!!!
 
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Keith and Royce - when you create a container for your content on a web page - either with a table or with a "div" - you set the properties of it, width, height, cell spacing, cell padding, backgrounds, borders, and a few other variables.

So if I create a table that's 800 pixels wide I only have that much room for the content. If I use say 125 for the navbar then I only have left 675 pixels, so any other picture or other content has to fit that dimension or the page won't display properly. The width will lnever go wider than the 800 Pix setting.

Now instead I set that width property for 80% say - it depends on the monitor settings how wide it can, will and does go. More of a dynamic dimension, sort of. I can put a picture there of 800 pix and it will add the 800 to the 125 for the navbar, plus any spacing between, and stretch to what it needs. I believe I'm over simplifying but this is the basic premise.

Hope this helps
 
bloomz said:
Keith and Royce - when you create a container for your content on a web page - either with a table or with a "div" - you set the properties of it, width, height, cell spacing, cell padding, backgrounds, borders, and a few other variables.

So if I create a table that's 800 pixels wide I only have that much room for the content. If I use say 125 for the navbar then I only have left 675 pixels, so any other picture or other content has to fit that dimension or the page won't display properly. The width will lnever go wider than the 800 Pix setting.

Now instead I set that width property for 80% say - it depends on the monitor settings how wide it can, will and does go. More of a dynamic dimension, sort of. I can put a picture there of 800 pix and it will add the 800 to the 125 for the navbar, plus any spacing between, and stretch to what it needs. I believe I'm over simplifying but this is the basic premise.

Hope this helps
Click to expand...
That's pretty accurate - of course liquid designs have their own issues to deal with. With the increasing prevalence of 20"+ widescreen monitors liquid (aka elastic) designs can become problematic. For example, if a line of text runs too wide it becomes difficult for the reader. Images can become jumbled,

It's important to test liquid designs on a variety of resolutions to maintain the look you want. Catalogue sites are typically much less likely to employ liquid designs as the layout needs to be controlled fairly strictly. However, blogs are quite well suited to elastic designs as long as the main content area doesn't stretch too wide.

Ryan
 
Bigger than sites that play music?

That's a tough one.....
 
Wow, thanks infinite. I checked out that website. The FTD one seems like it's in good proportion but the actual florist website is just too wide like you said. Even though this site doesn't extend the whole width it looks good because of the transitions and it is wider than the ones I had in mind. (I guess you could say the narrow ones look like someone stuck an 8 1/2 X 11 inch piece of paper up on the screen) Also, thanks to everyone else who added to my original question!
 
Good point bluegreen - this very chat site expands as needed.
 
Hey infinite, I think you did,too. I was actually refering to the lack of sharp edges and the each box is framed and not harsh looking. sorry for the confusion.
 
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