On 5 Mar 2003, at 22:39, Nigel Peck - MIS Web Design wrote:

> Of course it costs them. When someone views their homepage
> they have one chance to grab their attention. If 40% of
> the screen is white space that could have been better used
> to achieve that task then it definitely costs them.

That's the question - would letting long lines of text 
sprawl out the side of the page be a "better use" for 
catching people's attention? Not necessarily.

> It's fixed size layouts with 100% control that go back
> to print medium not the other way round. 

I was talking about why some non-web-designers might 
not like "wasted white space." I've seen fixed size 
layouts with 100% control (using Flash) that didn't have 
every square inch of the area crammed with stuff.

> Designers need to get used to the idea of creating a
> design that can adapt.

Very true. A big jump for many traditional graphic 
artists, in my experience. We have a designer here 
who's idea of a catalog web page was to put up a PDF 
of the existing catalog ... 

> I'm not saying that as much content should be there as
> possible. White space is fine if it's part of the design
> but when it's a big chunk at the side it's a different
> story.

Again, not necessarily. The size of that "big chunk" is 
determined by the visitor's browser window size, what 
looks big to one person may look too small to another.

> You would think a B&M were idiots if they left half the
> floor space completely empty. You seem to be talking about
> white space within a page layout not stuck at the side,
> two different issues. I don't like the typical Yahoo cram
> it all in design any more than most.

No, I wasn't saying that they leave it completely empty, 
but that they put it to good marketing uses, such as 
inviting aisles, space for lines to form at registers or 
around customer service kiosks, etc.

I don't make a distinction between white space at one 
side or another, or white space within the page. It's 
white space. If the amount of white space seems to be 
excessive and unused, perhaps the design could be 
reworked to use it more effectively or differently, but I 
don't think having white space on left or right side of a 
page is necessarily a bad thing.

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu

> Cheers,
> Nigel
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
> > [mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org]On Behalf Of David
> > Jones Sent: 05 March 2003 18:52 To:
> > hwg-techniques(at)mail.hwg.org Subject: Re: Accessibility
> > vs. column width control
> >
> >
> > On 5 Mar 2003, at 8:25, custom wrote:
> >
> > > I am generally in the "design for an 800 px wide
> > > screen no matter what" camp. Any site that makes me
> > > scroll horizontally I leave immediately -- unless
> > > they've got something free for me.
> > >
> > > But -- here's something to consider -- while I have
> > > never had a client complain about having to scroll
> > > horizontally (even when some had to because their
> > > screens were only 640 wide) I have had several
> > > complain about the amount of "unused space" on the
> > > right hand side.
> > >
> > > I try to explain the reasons for this to them, but it
> > > falls on deaf ears -- the "wasted space" theory really
> > > bugs them.
> >
> > That mindset goes back to print media. Empty paper
> > costs you money, so the idea was to put something on it
> > that would make money. Similarly, some brick & mortar
> > store floor layouts use as much of the floor space as
> > possible for making money by putting as much stuff out
> > there as possible. In a B&M store, that results in
> > cluttered stores and narrow aisles, and always makes me
> > think the store looks shabby and uninviting.
> >
> > Once people realize that empty space on a web page
> > costs them nothing, perhaps they'd have less problems
> > with "wasted whitespace."
> >
> > David
> > dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
> >
> 
> 


 

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