Regular visitors will, no doubt, have noticed by now that sjhoward.co.uk is a little wider than before. Frankly, this is because I felt that it was looking a bit weedy in comparison to the recently expanded Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Telegraph.co.uk, and that bastion of quality journalism, Heat World.

I’d love to say it was peer pressure, but that seems a little big-headed, even for me.

Anyway, I felt that the site needed expanding. However, as previously explored, if the text columns are any wider then they become more difficult to read. Short lines are always best on a computer screen.

Other important considerations were keeping the posts top-left, as the focal point of the page, and not ending up with two bamboozling sidebars next to each other - a look which always fries my mind, on any site.

So, I decided to use the extra space to highlight other stuff on the site - when you’ve got a back-catalogue of well over 1,000 posts, it seems a shame that only one or two are highlighted on any particular page. Hopefully, the little pictorial promo-boxes will encourage you to explore the site more, as well as brightening things up a bit.

Initial feedback has consisted mainly of ‘Ooh, what’s that think about Graham Norton?’, and ‘Tyra Banks? Click that!’ which I judge something of a success. Hopefully, there are enough of them to stop you becoming sick of the sight of them too quickly, and of course, I’ll add more all the time.

So… what do you think of the tweaked look? Any major complaints?

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I’m impressed - 800*600 support is so 1998 (yes, I know my site is fixed-width at 800*600, but I plan to change that soon). Now that anarchoristic throwback to the days of Internet Explorer 2 and Mac OS 7 has gone, the site looks surprisingly good with its extra sidebar, and it’s nice not to have the cliché of one sidebar on either side of the page. Good work.

» This comment was received at 16:10 on 09 December 07

I guess it is true, as my wife says of me, that as you get older, you get wider.
So it is with your blog. By the time you are old like me we will have to use the new wide screen monitors to view it.
Tne contents are still just as good and jucy, so keep it up.
I still hope you deceide to become a doctor in Renfrew County, Ontario so I can move back home.

» This comment was received at 18:44 on 09 December 07

Mort: It does indeed seem true that there’s a relationship between age and width… Your wife is right as usual

Thanks to you both for your kind comments - I think this is the biggest change I’ve done without a load of negative comments…

» This comment was received at 20:05 on 09 December 07

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