Sidebars

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Dan you should sell Mighty Mouses on your site for all this scrolling you want people to do.

Sidebars are completely 2005.

Single columns are the new black.

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.

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.

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.

You didn’t notice the dropdowns? They are open before the load.

i guess i saw the tags and blah blah thing, but i didn’t think to call that a dropdown.

Is that better? I don’t know why it doesn’t work right in Safari but I’m looking into it.

It’s wider, correct?

I have to admit that I’ve always been particularly fond of sidebars but I would also consider a sweet footer.

If you are stuck in the 90′s.

Usability? My blog has the same usability as any other with sidebars, if not better usability. And I don’t have a lot of clutter.

Dan, maybe you should read some books / articles on usability.

Actually usability is not a personal preference, it’s doing what makes sense to most users, completely independent of what you (the designer) personally thinks.

I’m not trying to say that it should be your only goal, or even that it should be more important than any other goal, such as artistic creativity, which (IMHO) you tend to favor with you design. Having the collapsing sections with the Activity and whatever the other one is (on just the main page and not the post pages) is a cool idea, and it looks neat. But my point is made by Nathan’s earlier comment in this very post, who expressed some confusion about these things (which you called dropdowns) being there, or what they were for, initially. If a smart guy like Nathan who does this kind of thing for a living finds it a little odd, then I guarantee it’s flying over the heads of most “average” users.

The fact is that most blogs have sidebars, and most users expect to see certain common things in them. When they are not there, it can be a bit confusing. I’m not saying that yours is “bad” or anything, I was just pointing out that sidebars are where users expect to see some things in a blog.

A similar analogy would be if you decided to have a more aesthetically appealing comment form. That Submit button is just hanging off to the bottom right down there by itself. It would probably look better if you kept it right-aligned but moved it up over the top of the big comment box, to keep things more balanced. (Even if you disagree on that, just go with me for a sec., for the sake of the example) The point is that even if you thought that looked better you still would (or should) not do it, because people expect to have submit buttons under the form, not over it.

Basically. when users are confused, that is a usability issue. To avoid this, you either have to have a brain-dead simple UI (like Google search), or at least be totally conformist and make your site look and work as much like every other similar site out there.

I’m not really suggesting you should do this, but that is the extreme, and I think that you should aim to land somewhere in the middle of that and having the coolest looking, most innovative site ever but one that no one knows intuitively how to use. Where along that path you decide to fall is where personal preference comes in, and since it’s your blog it’s totally your prerogative. I would just suggest that it’s best to err on the side of usability, or at least try to find good looking designs that still maximize it.

Of course, you know I’m not jealous or even really trying to give you a hard time about it. Just trying to join in on the topic of conversation (sidebars) and why I think they’re usually a good thing for blogs, at least in terms of usability.

Actually usability is not a personal preference, it’s doing what makes sense to most users, completely independent of what you (the designer) personally thinks.

I’m not trying to say that it should be your only goal, or even that it should be more important than any other goal, such as artistic creativity, which (IMHO) you tend to favor with you design. Having the collapsing sections with the Activity and whatever the other one is (on just the main page and not the post pages) is a cool idea, and it looks neat. But my point is made by Nathan’s earlier comment in this very post, who expressed some confusion about these things (which you called dropdowns) being there, or what they were for, initially. If a smart guy like Nathan who does this kind of thing for a living finds it a little odd, then I guarantee it’s flying over the heads of most “average” users.

The fact is that most blogs have sidebars, and most users expect to see certain common things in them. When they are not there, it can be a bit confusing. I’m not saying that yours is “bad” or anything, I was just pointing out that sidebars are where users expect to see some things in a blog.

A similar analogy would be if you decided to have a more aesthetically appealing comment form. That Submit button is just hanging off to the bottom right down there by itself. It would probably look better if you kept it right-aligned but moved it up over the top of the big comment box, to keep things more balanced. (Even if you disagree on that, just go with me for a sec., for the sake of the example) The point is that even if you thought that looked better you still would (or should) not do it, because people expect to have submit buttons under the form, not over it.

Basically. when users are confused, that is a usability issue. To avoid this, you either have to have a brain-dead simple UI (like Google search), or at least be totally conformist and make your site look and work as much like every other similar site out there.

I’m not really suggesting you should do this, but that is the extreme, and I think that you should aim to land somewhere in the middle of that and having the coolest looking, most innovative site ever but one that no one knows intuitively how to use. Where along that path you decide to fall is where personal preference comes in, and since it’s your blog it’s totally your prerogative. I would just suggest that it’s best to err on the side of usability, or at least try to find good looking designs that still maximize it.

Of course, you know I’m not jealous or even really trying to give you a hard time about it. Just trying to join in on the topic of conversation (sidebars) and why I think they’re usually a good thing for blogs, at least in terms of usability.

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