Feb
11
I’ve made a few small changes to the look of the site: a different Flickr badge, moving the search box to the top right, shuffling a few bits of furniture. The biggest change is that I’ve gone wider, to make the main content a little more readable (graphically speaking).
I apologize, to the nine per cent of people who come the site who have 800×600 pixel monitors, for the sideways scroll. But you can still read the main content without scrolling sideways, so it’s not too bad.
So far the tinkering doesn’t appear to have broken anything.
Works for me. The last few sites I’ve done have used >800px layouts, without much complaint. When the big sites (think washingtonpost.com, thestar.ca, globeandmail.com, etc) redesign, they’ve been going wide. Personally, I’m going to try going resolution-independent when I redo my site in the next couple of weeks. This means going light on graphics and possibly screwing up in places, but that’s what a personal site is for.
I like what Andrew Tanenbaum of electoral-vote-com (and Minix) fame had to say to those stuck on 800×600:
“Get a new monitor. From the statistics, I know that only 4% of visitors have a 600×800 screen, so the site is optimized for 768×1024 or better. Sorry.”
Considering that the gear to go 1024 can be had as hand-me-downs, it’s not a real big demand.