The Lair

I’ve realized that I have very definite opinions about what makes a website work for me. Or rather, I know what doesn’t work. The problem (if indeed it is a problem) is that my views are necessarily subjective and I wouldn’t want to impose them on anyone else. Well, except in the case of this blog, where I generally have the layout most suited to my reading habits and screen resolution.

For example, I prefer smaller fonts because that allows more information to fit into one screen. I’m not necessarily against scrolling to read a long page; but I’d prefer not to. I also prefer liquid layouts, where the content on screen can expand to accommodate a reasonably high screen resolution. If there is a lot of varied content, I’d prefer to have information arranged so as to allow scanning, without needing to read through a lot of (to me) irrelevant crap to get to the meat, as it were.

All other things (such as liquid layout) aside, one thing most people can’t stand in that laundry list above is the smaller fonts requirement. I can see why this is the case. When I was stuck with a lousy CRT at one point, I turned the screen resolution down to 800×600 to spare my eyes. Fortunately, I don’t need to do this anymore, so the screen resolution is turned up high – so as to fit in a lot of information into one screen. My point is, what works for me doesn’t necessarily work for someone else.

So I could go around building websites that suit only myself and fit all the information I want on screen and widen layouts to accommodate a reasonable screen resolution. Impractical, though. I’d be confined to reading my own content. Or, I could do what everyone else does and ignore the niggles. In fact, if you’ve bothered reading this far, you’re probably wondering why the heck I’m ranting about something quite so inconsequential as web page layout and arranging information. Think of the people starving in sub Saharan Africa, etc.

So, take one site which is a bit too cluttered for my tastes.

Monkey about with it a bit, grease some of the squeaky usability wheels.

And that’s what you get. Everything fits in one page, the fonts are smaller, the previews and pictures have been hidden (although the excerpt text can be folded out by clicking on the + sign). One load of the page allows an instantaneous scan of all the content. Exactly what I need. And this runs on my own browser, so only I see this view of the site. Everyone else sees the other layout, which I’m sure works for them. Thanks Greasemonkey.