Hands off my browser, punk!

Posted on 16 February 08, in web, design

To me, one of the most annoying things while browsing the web is running into a website that resizes my browser. I close any site that does immediately.

Is it really that hard to create a website that works in any browser and resolution? And to respect the fact that I have set my browser to a size that I like?

Who do you design for?

While most of us will immediately say: Duh, the user of course!, this is definitely not always the case. When you make decisions that overrule user settings, regardless of whether they are default or manually set, you need some very good arguments.

Resizing the browser window because you think it is the best framing for your design, is certainly not one of them. Giving it some thought, I cannot find any other argument for resizing your user’s browser. While I might not be an average user (I might have up to 10 tabs open in my browser between which I navigate for feeds, e-mail, work, reference and so on, that I want to able to view when your site is opened as well), I can’t see how anyone would enjoy having to manually drag or click their browser window back to it’s initial size.

Is the web really for you?

There are some design areas where you can fully control what your work looks like. For example, when you design a poster or brochure, the printed matter is final and will look exactly the same for everyone. The web however is a completely different medium. Web users all have different software, settings, preferences and needs, all of which influence the way content is perceived.

It’s your job as a designer to make sure users can access content the way they want to, not the way you want them to. That’s not to say you don’t have any control over what you create, because you do. Like with any other medium, communication through the web needs to be designed in order to make (better) sense.

You decide how content is ordered, branded and presented. Users will thereafter decide whether or not they want to access that content. So unless you are designing websites solely for your own viewing pleasure, it is an absolute necessity to balance your creative control with the needs of users.

If you are serious about designing for the web, you need to get over yourself and decide who it is you are designing for. It may sound harsh, but if you insist on keeping full control over what you create, the web might just not be for you.