Sidebars at Scattered

Sidebars

2 years, 7 months ago

. Tags: content, style.

Asked “why the blank space on the sides?”

I have to say, I don’t like sidebars, I think they clutter up space too much and if you can avoid them you might as well. My index has everything on it that I want, nothing other then blog links or a shoutbox I could add and feel pleased about the purpose of the addition.

My next release I plan another “slider” with the activity and a shoutbox at the top. Then I’ll make the rolling archives the full width of the bottom page making it more of a continuation of the posts above.

I understand that not having sidebars looks abnormal from other blogs but that’s the point, I want something that is designed different and puts the info about me or my blog in a better style then the cookie cutter styles that are so prominent. I’ve been to too many blogs where it’s an overload of info, left and right and you can’t even focus on the content within the first few seconds so you move along. I hate that.

Does anyone even look at sidebars anymore? I don’t.

FYI. I’m still not finished with the width, I need to collect some info before find the perfect content width.

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JaredB 2 years ago 1 point
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If you aren't going to have anything on the sides, then why not make it variable width, just using margins/padding on the sides? That way people with bigger screens could see more.

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Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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Two reasons:
1. The site looks like crap if it's stretched.
2. I want to limit the width with a max and min to fix that but IE doesn't support it. And not only does it not support it but it screws up everything else if I ignored it. I hate working with IE but I really have to if it's going to look like it did.

Fixed width is something I really don't want but until I figure out a better solution I don't care right now whether it is or isn't. The only people that it should matter are the people with huge screens, like mine, that make the browser full screen, like I don't.

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http://dancameron.org

JaredB 2 years ago 1 point
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I'm not sure what you mean by "stretched", unless you just mean that it reflows to fill the available space, which is usually the good idea if the goal is for people to read it. It's especially helpful for sight-impaired people, who can take the font size up several notches (CTRL in Firefox) to make it easier to read, but that gets annoying if the column is a fixed width in the center.

Then at the other end of the spectrum you have people with thin screens (like on portable devices - PDA's, cell phones, etc.) who will either have to do a bunch of side-scrolling or alter/disable stylesheet info in order to read it.

Not trying to talk you out of it or anything, just pointing out those kind of things in case they didn't occur to you, and to just generally be a pain.

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Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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Visually impaired, I understand but white on black isn't as bad as black on white (according to my assumption).

People can read it without flexible width because if I put stuff on the sidebar it would be the same exact size, which makes me remind you that this is about sidebars not flexible width vs. fixed. IF that were the case I would agree with you.

As for PDAs and smaller screens according to my stats everyone has opened this site with a window wide enough to display it. Most importantly flexible width looks even worse in portable browsers since your sidebars get compacted into the content on a small screen. And all the PDAs of recent include a feature to compact it properly.

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http://dancameron.org

JaredB 2 years ago 1 point
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I think you have a mistaken understanding of how you can present sidebars so that they do not do what you describe.

For a clearer perspective, take a look at my blog, which has a sidebar on the right of the main content area. The main content area will resize itself to maximize available screen real estate, while if you make the window small enough, the sidebar will drop down below the main content, not overlapping it or crowding it out.

Also, I hate to break it to you, but your stats are inaccurate when it comes to screen size. Screen size stats could only possibly be gathered via javascript, and since many small device browsers do not support javascript (or have it disabled), their screen size would never appear in your stats, so it makes sense that you haven't seen them.

There are a lot of browsers for small devices that will reformat the page for you, but there are probably just as many that won't.

But, in any event, if the issue is whether or not to have sidebars, I'd say that it's a perfectly valid artistic choice not to. You are right that this doesn't really have anything to do with fixed width, other than without sidebars it seems like accommodating a variable width layout would be that much easier.

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http://freepressblog.org

Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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1. That's because you have your sidebar is fixed width. I know how it works, if i had a sidebar I would have it variable, like I've had for my previous x amount of themes. IMHO, I rather see a variable width sidebar if you are going to make your blog that way.

2. Never even thought about that but I read my blog on my phone all the time and I had on my Treo and it looks fine. If you come to my site and see that you need to scroll to the right you need to adjust your browser setting on your PDA because it's better the "optimized" way. If you don't then you shouldn't mind my site at all since you probably are used to the other 90% of the web doing the same thing.

3. So if you split 1% in half then it decreases the amount of people I don't care to design for.

4. Thank you, you're right it is easier I originally had it that way. But I changed it because I don't like having it over 600px wide.

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http://dancameron.org

nstryker 2 years ago 1 point
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yeah, i wasn't asking why no sidebars, i was asking why so narrow, but you answered that. carry on. although you should really leave design in the hands of the reader. :-)

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nstryker 2 years ago 1 point
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i just wanted to point out that my left side bar grows when you expand your browser's text size. that's because my blog kicks ass.

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JaredB 2 years ago 1 point
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Re: #1 - I wasn't trying to say that it's the only way to do it, only that you implied in your earlier comment that having a sidebar would result in it being the same size, and/or that the sidebars would "get compacted into the content on a small screen" - just saying that it shouldn't be that way if done right.

I guess if you are assuming that you want a variable sidebar width for some reason (not sure why) then that would complicate things a bit.

I'm not complaining personally about reading your site on a small device, just pointing out that some people may have problems seeing it correctly. Sure, probably more than 90% of the sites out there are poorly designed, but that's not a great reason for following suit.

Mostly I'm just curious, not really criticizing. Is there any reason why you don't like it being more than 600px wide?

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http://freepressblog.org

Laundro 2 years ago 1 point
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Sidebars are completely 2005.

Single columns are the new black.

;)

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http://olympus-mons.com

JasonB 2 years ago 1 point
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Dan you should sell Mighty Mouses on your site for all this scrolling you want people to do.

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http://www.idealistfuture.com

Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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Nathan: I'll look into that, that's a good idea.
Laundro: I agree.
JasonB: I don't get it.

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http://dancameron.org

JasonB 2 years ago 1 point
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Because you insist on creating a giant long skinny main area without the use of any of the blank black on the sides for....oh I don't know....sidebars. Therefore forcing all of your readers on all size monitors to scroll like crazy, hench the Mighty Mouse comment.

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http://www.idealistfuture.com

Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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Still doesn't make sense since the sidebars don't show the main content so if you were reading posts on my blog, my old layout or even yours you would still scroll up and down the same amount. As for the info that would normally be set up for a sidebar, I put them in drop downs in the center which technically makes you scroll less since you don't have to scroll all the way down the skinny sidebar to get what you need.

But I get that you are making a joke but it's just not a very good one. :D

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http://dancameron.org

nstryker 2 years ago 1 point
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where are these supposed dropdowns? i see none. we want recent comments above the fold.

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nstryker 2 years ago 1 point
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the second thing i do now when i go to your blog is scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see what people have commented on. the first is see what new posts there are. if you say rss, i'll bitch slap you.

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Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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Recent comments will be the next thing I do. I've actually already setup a hidden drop down for it I just have to put it all together and restyle the footer.

No, I know this is a problem that's why I'm moving it to the top with a shoutbox sharing the dropdown, I miss the shoutbox of old (sort of). Like I said before it is the next thing I do. Maybe tonight since Lost is a re-run.

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http://dancameron.org

Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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You didn't notice the dropdowns? They are open before the load.

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http://dancameron.org

nstryker 2 years ago 1 point
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i guess i saw the tags and blah blah thing, but i didn't think to call that a dropdown.

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Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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What would you call it? I really don't know.

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http://dancameron.org

Dan 2 years ago 1 point
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Is that better? I don't know why it doesn't work right in Safari but I'm looking into it.

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http://dancameron.org

Scattered

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