Strange Layout of FlightAware Pages

Hey Flightaware,

Just got home to find that any page within Flightaware when I open is limited to a screen size. I have a rather large screen (1920x1200px) but as usual, scrpits will extend to cover the entire screen and Flightaware was doing this, I just got in and it stops at around mid screen, here is a screenshot:

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/6299/flightaware.jpg

I have noticed that you have been playing with the layout recently so hope its just a temporary bug (I noticed that the flight lists had a space between them for a few hours until it went back to normal).

Thanks,
Tomas.

Hello Thomas,

The change is deliberate. We now have a both a max-width and a min-width on the FlightAware web site. It had been a request, and I agree with the change. I think the site looks better and is more legible, because text in narrower columns is easier to read.

What I am concerned about, however, is when a wide view actually shows more information at once, and is a better user experience. I kept the max-width very wide at first, for this reason.

What do you think? Do you find you have to do more scrolling, or for any reason do you prefer the wider page?

I appreciate your feedback. If this hadn’t been deliberate I would have wanted to know right away!

Ann

Hello Ann,

Thanks for the prompt reply. It actually is better for lets say smaller screens and specially for devices such as mobile phones or iPhones which I both use. But, it is annoying on any screen larger than 19 inches with a higher resolution. I guess the change would be ok but let users choose between locked width/height and adjustable width/height, which I believe is a simple option located on the PHP script or whatever Flightaware uses that will make it adjust accordingly to the screen resolution, let it be the size it is.

As you can see from my photo it just looks horrible on large screens, I gather there will be more topics soon about this and people not liking it on large screens. You can justify by saying “why just don’t you make the explorer window smaller?” but then again, that is even more annoying as I never use my explorer in windowed mode.

Its again one of those changes which benefits some but has disadvantages with the other half and you always have to look for a resolution to have both sides happy.

Just my 2 cents!

Regards,
Tomas.

Hello Ann

Not sure I like the fixed page width. Right now I’m on my 21" UXGA+ desktop monitor and the pages are utilizing less than half the width available.

Regards,

James

Ditto.

You may as well just place some ads on the 33% of my laptop screen that is now just empty blue. Just no Troj… :imp: er, never mind.

Thankfully, I haven’t noticed any difference, as real estate is already at a premium on my 10.1" screen.

Smallest display I use nowadays is 12" and that’s difficult enough for me. Right now I’m on one of my laptops with a 15’4" 1920 X 1200 display and IMHO the new page layout leaves a great deal to be desired.

(This thread appears broken as the max width is right off the page, as if someone had posted a large photo.)

Someone has

Nice! :laughing: