Content Developer Gets A Nip and Tuck.
The beginning of a new month feels like an appropriate time to spend a moment talking about the new look here at ContentDeveloper.com.
Over the last few weeks Content Developer has moved from the 700 pixel wide two column look it started out with 18 months ago, to a brief stop last week on a 800 pixel wide 3 column design, to the now 940 pixel wide 4 column design where I think we will stay for a while.
The main reason for the brief stop at the 3 column design was my own personal difficulty in kicking the 800X600 screen resolution user to the curb. Well, kicking to the curb may be a little hyperbolic since the 800X600 user can still access Content Developer just fine, but now they have to scroll a bit left to right to see everything.
Many developers and designers are also apparently still struggling with this 800X600 question.
Choosing the highest value adding minimum user spec to serve as your design baseline has always been an important first step for many online projects. Developers thankfully were able to toss the 640X480 user overboard many moons ago and for the longest time all the projects I’d been associated with usually settled in at 800X600 as the generally accepted bottom rung of the user ladder. That’s a comfortable position to defend and continues to make some sense seeing as how even Windows XP Professional x64 still defaults to Super VGA on a fresh install.
So 800X600 is still in the game, but after reviewing some recent data and implementing 4 column designs that seem to flourish with that little bit of extra space on some other sites, I’m finally starting to lean toward adopting the 1024X768 user as the new default minimum spec.
Every project has its own decision process to go through, but should 1024X768 be the new default minimum design spec for browser based projects? And if you do make that leap are you committing that all too common error of putting the interests of designers and developers over the interests of the user?
According to W3Counter.com 800X600 resolution users now account for about 10-11% of internet users.
This is just one source and though their sample size is large it probably isn’t a truly scientific representative sample. Other sources (1, 2) show that it might be a bit low but do suggest that the figure is at least in the ballpark.
That 10%-20% range of 800X600 users is still plenty big enough for a site delivering mainstream content to a wide audience to care about and pay attention to. If I’m building a general audience site designed to deliver information about health care, then I am building with that 800X600 user still very much in mind. But what pushed me over the edge for this site was an acceptance (rationalization?) that the typical reader of blogs about creating content and media distribution is probably not running on that 800X600 minimum spec.
There is an argument to be made that the use of percentages in your CSS design is the answer to this challenge. You can create attractive, clean and functional designs built around allocating your screen real estate with ratios, but sometimes the use of percantages create new viewing inconsistency issues and impose their own limitations on what you can ultimately do.
So despite some still lingering cognitive dissonance I decided to stick with a fixed width design but say goodbye to 800X600. You’ve been a reliable friend 800X600 and we will likely meet again on other projects, but your time may have finally passed for this site.
A couple other additions to the new version of Content Developer I also wanted to mention are the freshened up masthead and the introduction of headlines from other blogs and traditional news sites about content.
These headlines are delivered via that great rss feed splicing and redistribution combo of feedblendr and feed2js. Feed2js now has moved off of its longtime home on the maricopa.edu servers and onto their own site provided by Modevia Web Services at feed2js.org. The announcement on the movement of feed2js also notes that an open source feed2js site will be coming to sourceforge soon.
A couple other indicators worth noting from the W3Counter stats is the still rising market share power of Firefox…
…and the steady 3% market share of Mac users.
Has that Mac market share number changed at all in the last 10 years? Even after all those great commercials?
I hope you find that the new look here works well for you.
Content Developer Comments
Comment on Open Source SMS Text Messaging Application by Creg FieldingTxtWire has a web service that will return the cell phone carrier. Just pass it a phone number and it will tell you who the carrier is even if the phone number is ported from one carrier to another. Our database is updated daily so even numbers that are ported today report correctly tomorrow. If you would like a demo account call. We have several large corporations and online software vendors using the service. cfielding@txtwire.com http://www.txtwire.com Comment on Open Source SMS Text Messaging Application by Kyle2008
Great post DC. Very interesting approach to sending SMS. Is the source code for this actually available anywhere? Thanks! Comment on Open Source SMS Text Messaging Application by JustUs1776
Great post. I'm a LAMP Developer and I was wondering if anyone has been able to build their own GSM server. That is, a server that can utilize a GSM modem to send direct, local messages to cell or IP phones. I'm working for a not-for-profit health care organization and have a suite of applications that I'd like to improve communication turn around time by sending SMS messages our nurses IP phones and our Physician's cell phones. I've found a ton of services that are all cost prohibitive and was hoping for an open source solution. Comment on Open Source SMS Text Messaging Application by Roy
My son's teacher would like to be able to send short text messages to students. I'm looking for a simple solution that would allow him to broadcast to 20-40 students a "reminder" about class info. This article looks very promising, but It appears to be server based. Can this type of program be modified to run run stand-a-lone, ie flash drive, desktop...? comment feed...