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Site usability is the most important aspect in web design. Why have the prettiest site with all the bells and whistles if nobody sticks around to see them because your site isn't usable? Users are very fickle and with so much competition on the internet, why should they go to your site if there is another site that is easier to use and faster. With a click of the button, they can be at a better site.
When making a site, the first decisions to think about are the page dimensions. Most vital is the page width. You want to make the most of the screen space, but you do not want to cause the user to scroll from left to right. It is awkward to do and users hate it.
All statistics I have seen have shown 800 X 600 to be the resolution of choice, followed by 1024 X 768. All other screen resolutions barely make up 10% of the web viewers. It would seem best to make sites that are 800 X 600 as both 800 X 600 users and 1024 X 768 users will be able to see the site well.
However, the width of the screen is also taken up by the scrollbar. So when choosing a width you should remove 40 pixels. That means for an 800 X 600 screen the width should be 760.
So now, you design
your site to be 760 wide. You are all set to go, right? Nope, there are still
other factors. Browsers add a left margin and this number varies between
browsers. It is best to remove these margins by adding the leftmargin=0 tag
for Internet Explorer and the marginwidth=0 tag for Netscape. Both of these
tags go in the <body> tag of your page. (Side note: To remove the
top margin use topmargin=0 for IE and marginheight=0 for Netscape.)
Many big sites don't find having a fixed width pleasing, so they make sites to take up 100% width. These sites will change size to fit the users browser window. In terms of usability, this is the best option. However, this also has its short falls. Since certain object on a page have a fixed size, such as graphics, the rest of the page will adjust for the screen size, but gaps may occur due to the graphics. One must be skilled to use this as a choice.
Some people use JavaScript to create a page based on the users screen size, but I would not do this because many users now disable JavaScript to avoid pop-up windows.
When it comes to the length of a page there seems to be no consensus on how users like it or not. It would appear that this is only a minor issue. Huge pages are clearly a bad idea and three to five screen heights appears to be acceptable. Whenever possible I would suggest keeping it on one screen. Why make the user scroll if they don't have to.
In short, the best option is to design for 100% screen width or for 760 pixels wide. For length, keep it on one screen if you can, and if this is not possible keep it below three screen lengths |
