Fixed-width design, my monkey, and me.
This past week, one of my favorite design forum hangouts, Typophile.com was redesigned. It’s a great site, and I’m grateful for the folks at Punchcut for maintaining and hosting this great resource.
The redesign is nice, but one thing still really bugged me…they use a fixed width layout and assume I use a gigantic monitor with a fully maximized browser. In the feedback thread, a few folks sided on the pro-fixed-width and a few sided on the pro-liquid design, but, in the end, the fine folks at Punchcut decided to throw down a mandate that we all use wide browsers. So be it.
But then I remembered Greasemonkey. Greasemonkey is a Firefox Extension that allows you to attach custom javascript to any web site/page you want. It’s like user-style sheets, but with more horsepower. It’s not just user-centered design, but user-controlled design.
I’ve always been a javascript hack, but recent buzz about Ajax has finally gotten me to start learning the language a bit more formally. And Greasemonkey is perhaps going to be the final motivation. With my greasy monkey partner at my side, we can conquer the way-too-wide-fixed-width internet! Well, at least in my browser.
Anyways, this is a quick hack, but if you are a fellow typophile visitor and would like to view the forums at your own preferred width, you can use this script. It changes the Wrapper Div used for the forum posts from 800px to 80%. And then adjusts a few other things to fit. Install Greasemonkey first, then just right-click the link below and select ‘install user script’:
typophileliquidlayoutv1.user.js (right-click to install this greasemonkey script)
The usual warnings apply…I’m dangerous with javascript…this might blow up your computer for all I know, but it’s there if you want it. I may or may not try to improve upon this. If anyone wants to improve upon my javascript hackery, by all means, please do.
