Tales of a Designer

Graduating From 800

For awhile now, and with various projects, I’ve been debating when would be the best time to try out a design that exceeds the standard 800×600. There has been much talk about it, and you already see it happeneing. Now of course you have to take into context the actual project goal and content, because maybe it won’t be worth it for a small brochure site.

I was reading a really good article from Warpspire today and it make me think a little more about this whole issue of exceeding the 800×600. Anyways, he used Mint as an example of how they took it into their own hands to create a great prodcut, however, it does not work with IE. And although that’s a pretty big deal, the application is a huge success.

Now the thing that I thought from the Mint example was this; what if Mint became extremely huge outside of the design world and somehow became essential to use for websites. Wouldn’t there then be a following of browsers to get their engines to support this browser to make sure that it works? Sort of like how this whole CSS thing started, and now by the time IE7 comes out, it will work with CSS alot better than it does now.

The point that I am trying to make is that someone has to be the innovator. That’s how trends start. Someone does something, and the rest follow suit. There is no big announcement. You won’t see a special on CNN about designers forgetting about 800×600 and moving up. And like I said, it really depends on the kind of site you are doing, but it seems as though peope are waiting around for this thing to blow up instead of diving right in. Of course people still have small screen resolutions but you know what, they need to keep up with techonology like the rest of us, so sometimes you just need an upgrade.