Computer monitors now have a bigger screens. If you check the visitor traffic to any website, you will find that fewer visitors have screens that are less than 1024 pixels in width. 1024 x 768 is often the most popular screen size for visitors. Web designers are usually creating websites that will give the best viewing experience at this resolution or even bigger. Perhaps it is not surprising since that is usually the screen size they are working on.
What is often forgotten is what goes on the page. If the whole screen is bigger, then presumably elements on the screen can be larger too. That clearly is the thinking behind the news that iGoogle Goes Wide, Introduces Canvas Pages as Erick Schonfeld pointed out last week.
Google’s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.
Partners that are launching with expanded gadgets include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TV Guide, iLike, CurrentTV, and Go Comics. Google itself has created extra-wide gadgets for Google Reader, Gmail, Google Finance, and YouTube.
Another item that can be re-examined in this bigger screen world is the size of display ads on web pages. Surprisingly they are often 125 pixels by 125 pixels, which can even work well on that old 800 pixel width screen. In the new StayGoLinks redesign we have gone with 160 pixels by 160 pixels as the normal minimum standard for a sidebar ad. As time passes and people get more accustomed to designing for the bigger screens, then this may well become the trend.
Clearly the larger area (almost two thirds bigger) gives an advertiser much more space to develop an eye-catching ad. It will be interesting to see how quickly such ads become the norm.
