It’s Official: 1000 is the new 800
The Wall Street Journal Online has redesigned its homepage. Among other changes, the page is now fixed at around 1000 pixels wide. Here’s a quote from the letter introducing the redesign:
“We’ve taken advantage of the trend toward larger screen sizes and designed the page at a wider resolution to make the most of available space. The page will now be a fixed width and won’t change when the browser window does.”
One can only assume that the WSJ made the determination — based on usage data — that a sufficient percentage (whatever that means) of their audience would be able to view the entire page without scrolling horizontally. This is a great development and I’m sure we can expect to see other sites following suit. A few months back, we helped CNNMoney.com redesign their homepage and the design team on that project also opted for 1000 pixel page width — although we allowed the page to scale down in narrower browser windows.
Here’s what I don’t get: WSJ kept the left nav intact, which creates a 4-column layout that, to my eye, looks quite cramped. When we were exploring design alternatives for CNNMoney, we were not able to get happy with a 4-column approach that maxed out at 1000 pixels wide. So, why did WSJ make this choice? I realize that changing the main navigation would have required that the whole site be redesigned — which was not in plan, I’m sure. But why not let the new homepage scale up for those of us with wider browser windows (as the rest of the site does)? In my opinion, this would have improved the appearance of the page significantly. That said, there is a lot of debate regarding vertical vs. horizontal navigation. We are finding with many of our projects that wider pages look better with top / horizontal navigation. Even when they are afforded extra width, 4 columns is a lot of visual noise to deal with.
The WSJ redesign is another sign that sites are increasingly comfortable with designing wider pages. It will be interesting (and fun) to see how page layouts and navigation evolve in the context of this new capability.
May 14th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Can you provide a screen shot for those of us who are not subscribers? I’d like to see what you’re talking about.
Also, I think it’s important to keep in mind that the sites you mentioned, CNN and WSJ would presumably have a similar user base, that is, one with enough money to afford the bigger, better monitors. I’d be interested to see the stats for a site like, Walmart.com or something.