A Note on Site Width as a Neglected Dimension

Elgg suffers from a poverty of themes, both in numbers and quality. So far I have not seen a single Premium Elgg theme that is anywhere near some of the FREE themes available at Joomla and Pligg, for instance. But what disturbs me most personally is the wide indifference to the width factor.

The vast majority of computer users (both at home and workplace), still use the good old CRT montior with its 800px width, and this will remain so for years to come (changing the resolution through the Control Panel is a different thing). Can we ignore this hardware situation, which is a social situation? Ironically many programmers go all the hog to make their themes compatible even with IE6.

Width controlling is the in-thing now (it should be that way), usually with three options: Narrow, Wide, Auto.

1. Narrow: This is for the users (the vast majority, including me until recently) who use a CRT monitor. The width should be less than 800px (preferably 780px). Only here an Elgg programmer needs some recoding and a special style sheet.

2. Wide: This is the width of the default Elgg theme (990px, right?). No special coding required.

3. Auto: This is the width automatically used by the theme as set by the hardware or by the user through the control panel. This too doesn't require any special coding. All you have to do is set Body width to 100%

Model: I give a here a link, picked at random, that would give you the idea. See: http://www.joomlademos.de/home?template=templatka11. This FREE Joomla template, in addition, gives you letter-size control and color change control as well.

So the main work comprises creating a control panel that shows the options, and the creation of the 'Narrow' version. Nowadays several FREE Joomla themes come with these options. Elggers need to realize the importance of width as a crucial dimension. Please get rid off that pestering horizontal scroll bar (my most favourite US President Ronald Reagan once said, "Mr. Gorbachev, please remove a few bricks from this wall"). 

In fact, if the default version is the "narrow version", there will still be less exra work (maybe no extra work at all). Let me grab another example. This time from Pligg (one software I had used and deftly discarded): http://dev.digitalnature.ro/fusion/xhtml/index-pliggtest.html (I asked the developer to make a theme like that for Elgg. He said, Yes, he will when he gets time, but it is not created so far.)

Can't we use percentage in place of fixed width values as a norm? Something like Body: 98%, Canvas 95% ... down to colums? I am a light-weight programmer, the anorexia type, but it's a type that is connected with good "looks" -- in programming, I mean :). Seriously, is "all based on percentage" (with, of course, the mini/max stuff put where necessary) possible?

Actually, this is a plea, guys -- from one who is pixel-fuzzy (by the way, the error messages block is a bit wider than the canvas)

Note: The first ever website I created for myself didn't need even vertical scrolling. I merely used a technique already available in HTML. Just create an UP icon and DOWN icon. Users only have to place the mouse on them to browse up and down. This is Ok for a simple website, quite impossible (at least for me) to be implemented in complex sites. But the width factor is different. It's a social, ethical, and political factor. By god, I am not being funny.