Posted by Andy Dingley on 03/22/06 14:32

red_dragon2983 wrote:

> I do not know if I should have a sidebar.

Yes.

Screens are big these days, so wide windows (in pixel terms) are a
reasonable expectation. At the same time, the old usability standard
of not making the text lines too long (in character terms) still
stands.

So the upshot is, we've got width to burn.

Go for your sidebar. It's either useful itself, or it adds a whitespace
margin around the text block. Both of these are generally good things
from a usability aspect.

If your users' screens are narrow (new devices) then they'll get forced
into sideways scrolling. As a sidebar isn't generally needed
simultaneously with reading the main content, then this isn't an
unreasonable constraint for the big content / small screen context.
Good design techniques help too (i.e. don't lay it out with a <table>
and expect it to be flexible design for funny window sizes).

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