Width and Colour

I was having a discussion with a friend earlier today about newspaper websites, she was basically asking why they’ve all become so big and fill up so much of the screen.

It started with the Telegraph - they switched from the long time common 800 wide template to the now common 1024 wide template. Then the Times followed with their wide design and eventually every one of the major newspaper sites going the same way.

Now it’s really only the BBC and Channel 4 that have 800 wide news websites as all the newspapers, Sky News, ITV News and Five News have switched to the wider format.

The BBC will be falling into line very soon and I doubt Channel 4 will be much behind them. After all - if one does it then they all seem to want to. When The Sun launched a shiny new site the Mirror weren’t far behind - when the Telegraph went big so did the Times.

But is this desire for more screen realestate a good thing? After all it requires at least a 17″ monitor, or a very good 15″ monitor to be dsiplayed without scrolling and even then would need those users to have the browser shown full size.

This ignores people, even those with large monitors like me, who want to have several windows open at once - often I’ll have my Wordpress dashboard open on the left of the screen with another site open on the right.

At the moment, with a 21″ monitor I can comfortably view two full browsers as long as the site is 800 wide - I have to scroll if it is 1000 or higher.

I know this is just part of life and with an increasing number of UGC, social media and services putting demand on a content producer for space around a story - realeastate is necessary and in demand - but is it worth it?

On top of that - not all sites have gone for the same width - some are up to 1500 wide and others are below 1000. I’ve created a graphic that shows all the UK newspaper websites as bars.

Each one is a different colour - one that represents the design of the site in question and is a different size. I’ve measured the size by taking a screen grab and drawing a box over the main content area - this ignores any side adverts that aren’t within the main content box.





As you can see from the image above - the Daily Express (shown in black) and The Sun are the largest of all the main papers (I haven’t included the Star but it’s about the same size as the Sun) closely followed by The Mirror and The Times - both within the margin of error of being the same size as The Sun and Express.

The smallest of the papers is The Guardian followed by The Daily Mail (which is within the margin of error of being the same size). This is interesting as - despite being smaller The Guardian manages to get a considerable amount more content, in a much easier and more accessible way on it’s frontpage than either The Sun or The Daily Express.

I think there could be a useful new web service in the offering here - a site that pulls in RSS feeds from each of the major news services and publishes them with headline, summary, image and link to a 480 wide page - so people like me can stack browsers.

Sphere: Related Content