i just hope sales are way down in the last 2 months.

One of my favorite sites is Wheresgeorge.com that is a currancy tracking site. When they reformatted their pages they added code on a separate page in their FAQ so the user could adjust the width themselves. (See below)

Isn't that a possibility here to make everyone happy? (Yes, I am one who has to scroll and I spend a lot less time here than I used to.)

Abb1e
_____________

Set Browser Page Width

You can use this page to set the width of this site to accommodate your browser or specific computer settings.

Your current page width setting is: 100% pixels.
Enter Width of your browser window in Pixels:______

The minimum layout width available is 600 pixels.
For smaller screens, you can try 800 pixels.
Or you can accept the default above to use the maximum width available.

Or you can check this box to select 100% full browser window width: (Produces the best visual results)

saltone wrote:
Although I don't agree, I can see your point on the screen size and the whole "it's the future", but what is the justification for the new color? It is just plain ugly.

Salty

Welcome to the club. Don't make any noise or Principal Matt will come in and "crack skulls."

It's pointless to ask about the color. No sufficient explanation has been given, the random color of crappy/puke green has never been explained.

Just shut up, shop, give woot your money and move on.

/bitter, party of one.

abb1e wrote:One of my favorite sites is Wheresgeorge.com that is a currancy tracking site. When they reformatted their pages they added code on a separate page in their FAQ so the user could adjust the width themselves.

I checked out the site, and it fit w/o any fooling on my part. Is the wider res an option, and the "usual" width the default?
That would be a decent option. At this point, not one I'd expect to be used, but a decent one none the less.

unixrab wrote:Welcome to the club. Don't make any noise or Principal Matt will come in and "crack skulls."

It's pointless to ask about the color. No sufficient explanation has been given, the random color of crappy/puke green has never been explained.

Just shut up, shop, give woot your money and move on.

/bitter, party of one.

Glad hue asked ;)

I've posted about color generally, but I kept the topic on some needed readability/contrast adjustments - I was pretty sure other aspects were opinions that would evolve over time like mine did. Certainly I respect those who enjoy our brand enough to become emotionally attached to our website color like I do.

First design mock ups came early last fall I believe. Here's my 6 month or so color perceptions, as seen through questions I voiced to the design team or internal staff:

month 1 Questions:
Why would we change colors?
Why would we change to this color?
Hey I've seen this color before - have you ever changed baby diapers?
How do you not hate this color as much as me?

month 2-3 Questions:
What? Our designers are still recommending this color? Are they color blind?
Oh geeze, do they not realize the koi we're gonna take?
Has any of the other staff seen this color yet?
Can't we just switch colors with another dot-woot for the main page?

month 4-5 Questions:
[none]

month 6 Question:
I forgot - what color is the woot again?


As that describes, my current perspective is mostly ambivalence. It does feel harder to "own" this more singular color than our previous dual-color theme. It's more to bite off and chew as brand challenges go. We're about 2% into the lifespan the last color scheme, though. If somehow the longer it takes for a color to grow on you eventually reciprocates in the amount you love it, I'm extremely excited about this choice.

sarcasm aside, I am indeed confident of our design team and I appreciate strong opinion that I might not be immediately aligned with. Given the emotional distance I've traveled in liking this 1000% more over 6 months, I am already impressed.

Snapster wrote: design team

There's your problem. What is often put together by teams in an office may seem like a good idea, but often miss the mark. (see "New Coke" or "Zune")


Salty

saltone wrote:There's your problem. What is often put together by teams in an office may seem like a good idea, but often miss the mark. (see "New Coke" or "Zune")

Salty

eh? One could argue that neither of those were a failure from a customer engagement perspective, but let's just cut to the chase. Did superman make the decision to bring back Old Coke and design the iPod? I've long suspected teams in an office.

Snapster wrote:eh? One could argue that neither of those were a failure from a customer engagement perspective, but let's just cut to the chase. Did superman make the decision to bring back Old Coke and design the iPod? I've long suspected teams in an office.

Holy crap Matt... you and I are the same age... I know you remember the outrage at New Coke. I remember it vividly (as should you). And they didn't even have the gall to change the !#%!@ colors!!!!

"Coke spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out where it had made a mistake, ultimately concluding that it had underestimated the public impact of the portion of the customer base that would be alienated by the switch. This would not emerge for several years afterward, however, and in the meantime the public simply concluded that the company had, as Keough suggested, failed to consider the public's attachment to the idea of what Coke's old formula represented."

Snapster wrote:

month 6 Question:
I forgot - what color is the woot again?

It is **VERY** forgettable. That is the point. exactly.

Snapster wrote:
As that describes, my current perspective is mostly ambivalence. It does feel harder to "own" this more singular color than our previous dual-color theme. It's more to bite off and chew as brand challenges go.

Ambivalence. Again... if what the design team was shooting for is forgetability and ambivalence. They have succeeded at the highest level.

Snapster wrote:
sarcasm aside, I am indeed confident of our design team and I appreciate strong opinion that I might not be immediately aligned with. Given the emotional distance I've traveled in liking this 1000% more over 6 months, I am already impressed.

1000% of zero is zero in my case.

Why did Woot go to a design that won't fit on a 1024x768 screen? This is the most common screen size out there. Granted, wide Screen monitors are becoming more popular, but they're not everywhere. I'm sick of having to scroll this stupid page back and forth.
The designs fine from the color and layout standpoint. The last one was also.

Isn't the bottom line that people don't like horizontal scrolling, and that the largest percentage of users (by a long shot) are running at 1024?

I agree with previous posts that woot might be ahead of its time in trying to redefine the best web layout. Additional page width won't be accepted until pixel density/clarity increases, because there is a maximum of how much of your field of view can be comfortably occupied by a screen (ie. as monitor size increases, people will sit farther away from them to be comfortable). This results in the screen taking up (very rough estimate) ~50% of your field of view, no matter what size the screen is. For example, I can read a sign 100 yards away, as long as the letters take up at least a certain percentage of my field of view. The absolute size of the letters is not relevant.

In the future it will probably be more useful to think of these things in terms of percentage of screen (and, loosely, field of view). I believe that the current browser technology is what's most limiting this now. When browsers are "smart" and can resize every element of a page relative to the rest, things will be easier to work with.

I love change and this change is a good one. I would like to see some more color variations, but altogether it is a cleaner, more modern look. Bravo!

Thanks for not covering your page with advertisements.

tiffmw wrote:Thanks for not covering your page with advertisements.

um... turn off your ad blocker and look again... big square right in the middle... two more further down the page

(just trying to help - woot needs that view count)

Speebs wrote:Isn't the bottom line that people don't like horizontal scrolling, and that the largest percentage of users (by a long shot) are running at 1024?

I agree with previous posts that woot might be ahead of its time in trying to redefine the best web layout. Additional page width won't be accepted until pixel density/clarity increases, because there is a maximum of how much of your field of view can be comfortably occupied by a screen (ie. as monitor size increases, people will sit farther away from them to be comfortable). This results in the screen taking up (very rough estimate) ~50% of your field of view, no matter what size the screen is. For example, I can read a sign 100 yards away, as long as the letters take up at least a certain percentage of my field of view. The absolute size of the letters is not relevant.

In the future it will probably be more useful to think of these things in terms of percentage of screen (and, loosely, field of view). I believe that the current browser technology is what's most limiting this now. When browsers are "smart" and can resize every element of a page relative to the rest, things will be easier to work with.

you are largely correct, but do have some factual misunderstandings. best to point you back one page where the majority of these observations are discussed. (look for woot's audience spreadsheet link and the wikipedia link to pixel density evolution as monitor size increases)

the bottom line is those unhappy fall into people contesting points 1a, 1b or both based on their perceptions of woot's case/need. over time our case/need will be come more clear and of course technology will evolve even more to our advantage.

editorkid wrote:Well, except there are only four of you and the four of you are clearly doing this for fun, in the sense of entertaining yourselves.

You forgot to enclose your comment in [sarcasm] tags. I've been away for a while (too cheap to pay a hotel's $8/day internet fee), but in my absence I see a significant number of new members in the "hate it" club.

I have to admit though that the woot-off is going smoothly. Pages are loading quickly, and I have yet to see any server errors. Good job on that front.

Sonan wrote:You forgot to enclose your comment in [sarcasm] tags. I've been away for a while (too cheap to pay a hotel's $8/day internet fee), but in my absence I see a significant number of new members in the "hate it" club.

I have not been away. I think your cursory glance has mislead you.

Snapster wrote:I have not been away. I think your cursory glance has mislead you.

Wait, what? I didn't say you've been away. I said I've been away. So unless you and I are the same person, which we aren't, then I'd say your cursory glance has mislead you.

Sonan wrote:Wait, what? I didn't say you've been away. I said I've been away. So unless you and I are the same person, which we aren't, then I'd say your cursory glance has mislead you.

No, not whom was away. I hope that it was a cursory glance of the thread that led you to your perception that "new" members dropping by who "hate it" are "significant." By my quick glance, subtracting those not new and not hating it, there are perhaps 3? Not that I think it defines anything at all - it's simply not a remarkable datapoint in either direction.

Snapster wrote:No, not whom was away. I hope that it was a cursory glance of the thread that led you to your perception that "new" members dropping by who "hate it" are "significant." By my quick glance, subtracting those not new and not hating it, there are perhaps 3? Not that I think it defines anything at all - it's simply not a remarkable datapoint in either direction.

Gotcha. I blame my cold medicine. My comment about the significance of the new "hate it" comments was mainly in response to the person I was replying to (editor-something?) who tried to claim there are only about 4 people who hate the new design. The fact that we've had at least 3 new posters saying it, 37 pages into this discussion, seems significant to me.

Sonan wrote:Gotcha. I blame my cold medicine. My comment about the significance of the new "hate it" comments was mainly in response to the person I was replying to (editor-something?) who tried to claim there are only about 4 people who hate the new design. The fact that we've had at least 3 new posters saying it, 37 pages into this discussion, seems significant to me.

ah ok, yeah editorkid or something. Well significant is certainly subjective. My assumption is that there are 10's of thousands of people who at the very least mildly dislike this width with their current equipment. to go further, even, their dislike is much more palpable and likely to be vocal than anyone's mild / mostly ambivalent enjoyment of our width.

Snapster wrote:ah ok, yeah editorkid or something. Well significant is certainly subjective. My assumption is that there are 10's of thousands of people who at the very least mildly dislike this width with their current equipment. to go further, even, their dislike is much more palpable and likely to be vocal than anyone's mild / mostly ambivalent enjoyment of our width.

to which I again opine that the reason this is largely a dying thread and there are not new haters is because it is buried in the blog and not advertised anywhere on woot. Put it up in lights... make a vote/poll page... I wager that the feedback would start pouring in.

Snapster wrote:you are largely correct, but do have some factual misunderstandings. best to point you back one page where the majority of these observations are discussed. (look for woot's audience spreadsheet link and the wikipedia link to pixel density evolution as monitor size increases)

I think I somehow managed to miss most of that page. Forgive me.

I'm not clear on 2 things though:

1) What were my factual misunderstandings? (not really important, just curious)

the bottom line is those unhappy fall into people contesting points 1a, 1b or both based on their perceptions of woot's case/need. over time our case/need will be come more clear and of course technology will evolve even more to our advantage.

2) It sounds like you are blaming those who are annoyed by the side-scrolling for making assumptions about woot.com. It's largely irrelevant what woot's intentions are. If in 1 year everyone can fit 1080 pixels onto a screen with no scrolling, and you say "see, I told you so," that doesn't make it any less aggravating or more acceptable for those who have to side-scroll now. Why impose it before the technology is ready? What purpose does it serve, other than absolving you of the responsibility of figuring out a better layout for most people?

EDIT: Also, for the record, I run at 1280x1024 both at work and at home. I don't have any scrolling issues, and don't mind the new color scheme at all. What confuses and irks me a little bit is the decision to alienate customers/fans without what I would consider good justification.

The only niggles I have with the new layout is the annoying ads, and the fact that at least 50% of the time I go to www.woot.com (either directly or by clicking on "today's woot", the CSS is entirely broken. I have to manually refresh for it to work again.

Wow, so this new site is like running on some old IBM-XT or something? It is so sloooooowww, and the woot-off meter tends to jump about from full to half, to empty, while always having that "I Want One" button... although I have not seen it work for me the couple of times I've clicked on it.

I'm giving it 2 thumbs down!!!
1) for the Look is not great kinda corp America look... and I think we've seen that's not a good thing.
2) performance / stability seems to be highly suspicious.

-sf

Speebs wrote:I'm not clear on 2 things though:

1) What were my factual misunderstandings? (not really important, just curious)

I was referring to these points in your initial comments

Speebs wrote:... the largest percentage of users (by a long shot) are running at 1024?

Speebs wrote:... until pixel density/clarity increases

On Woot, the largest percentage of users are not running 1024, even with the sprawl of resolutions beyond it. And by my read of the majority of 1024 width monitors versus the majority of 1280 or greater monitors, pixel density has increased to such degree that our webpage is more physically narrow on them than our 960 wide Woot 2.0 design was on a 1024 screen.

Speebs wrote:2) It sounds like you are blaming those who are annoyed by the side-scrolling for making assumptions about woot.com.

I've stated often that this design is annoying for those running 1024 and that nothing I can say will resolve that annoyance. All I can do is be transparant on our decision including the need we have for a wider design and the data it is based on.

Speebs wrote:
It's largely irrelevant what woot's intentions are. If in 1 year everyone can fit 1080 pixels onto a screen with no scrolling, and you say "see, I told you so," that doesn't make it any less aggravating or more acceptable for those who have to side-scroll now. Why impose it before the technology is ready? What purpose does it serve, other than absolving you of the responsibility of figuring out a better layout for most people?

I've attempted to establish our need earlier with regards to columns and content we desire on the front page. I could probably do a lot better job, but the eventual addition of content modules on the front page will be the best proof. The voice of users satisfied with our decision and enjoying our additional front page content is not going to be heard here, or likely in any of our forums. 90% of our audience doesn't post, a good portion of these members view our front page content only.

I've attempted to share our demographic data, and compare it to what's reported as the norm. I would offer that we're expanding beyond 1024 at approximately the same data point many sites expanded beyond 640x480 and 800x600.

Speebs wrote:
EDIT: Also, for the record, I run at 1280x1024 both at work and at home. I don't have any scrolling issues, and don't mind the new color scheme at all. What confuses and irks me a little bit is the decision to alienate customers/fans without what I would consider good justification.

Fair enough. Often times we see the most reaction on display from those with overactive empathy, but your concern is still valid and even a refreshing perspective here in this thread. Do we value an improvement to the Woot experience of the majority at the discomfort of the minority? Maybe. We definitely value the objectives of some new page elements (like the discussion module to pull people into the community more) If the minority is shrinking at over 2% a month and accelerating in it's decline, that's also a consideration. Designing the page so that the 1024 window can perform most necessary navigation was a definite consideration.

Speebs wrote:
The only niggles I have with the new layout is the annoying ads, and the fact that at least 50% of the time I go to www.woot.com (either directly or by clicking on "today's woot", the CSS is entirely broken. I have to manually refresh for it to work again.

I've covered previously that there are less ads on woot 3.0, but easily agree that the top center one is in your face more. This makes the price of woot items cheaper.

CSS issues we definitely need to address and fix. There were a few right launch and there likely are on people's first visit with old css in their cache. Are you using Safari by chance? (I heard of an isolated issue there when combined with some third party stuff) Let us know any relevant specifics so we can track down and fix.

Thanks for the response. I guess I shouldn't have attempted to read this thread at work, since I obviously havne't been able to pay as much attention as I should have to what I was reading.

And you're right... I am an idealist, which tends to place me in the "empathetic" category. Partly that is due to my work environment (I work for a large company that makes decisions without testing/asking anyone, just because they seem like good ideas at the time, and end up hurting the employees due to short-sightedness).

Anyway, i'm using IE7. My 50% figure was quite inaccurate, because the CSS doesn't work ANY time I click on "today's woot" or go directly to www.woot.com. I haven't been able to test this at home yet, where I use FireFox. Will test tonight and post back here. Also, the CSS is being referenced in the HTML even when it doesn't appear to be working. My first thought was a caching issue, but it's still happening even after clearing my cache.

Cheers

So what is Woot's reasoning for adopting the wide layout? I keep hearing future development plans without any inkling of what that will be.

While I do have a monitor capable of displaying the site IF I were to run my browser full screen. I DON'T run my browser full screen. I got a large monitor so I could multitask and have multiple windows open simultaneously. This is why I question Woot basing design decisions based on the display size results in the stat reports they reference for making this decision.
You're making an assumption that everyone with a big display runs their programs full screen, or wants to.

I am annoyed that yours is the only site I regularly visit that doesn't fit in my preference of window size and I have to scroll horizontally if I want to see it. Actually I'm now beyond being annoyed (or even bothering to scroll right anymore to see that content for that matter) and I've stopped buying from Woot. Was this what you were hoping for with the makeover?

Cheap koi alone won't get me to buy from you. You need a compelling place I like visiting. This makeover is not that.

goodynuf wrote:So what is Woot's reasoning for adopting the wide layout? I keep hearing future development plans without any inkling of what that will be.

While I do have a monitor capable of displaying the site IF I were to run my browser full screen. I DON'T run my browser full screen. I got a large monitor so I could multitask and have multiple windows open simultaneously. This is why I question Woot basing design decisions based on the display size results in the stat reports they reference for making this decision.
You're making an assumption that everyone with a big display runs their programs full screen, or wants to.

I am annoyed that yours is the only site I regularly visit that doesn't fit in my preference of window size and I have to scroll horizontally if I want to see it. Actually I'm now beyond being annoyed (or even bothering to scroll right anymore to see that content for that matter) and I've stopped buying from Woot. Was this what you were hoping for with the makeover?

Cheap koi alone won't get me to buy from you. You need a compelling place I like visiting. This makeover is not that.

more fits on the page. things we have now that we didn't have before and things we'll have in the future. other discussion on pixel density and ideal field of view (though likely unacceptably philisophical for you) are further back in this thread.

goodynuf wrote:(...)I am annoyed that yours is the only site I regularly visit that doesn't fit in my preference of window size and I have to scroll horizontally if I want to see it.

For what little it's worth, I've found that the redesign allows me to run most of my browser windows at 800 x 600 and see everything I need to see. (The rightmost column begins at about 850 pixels from the left, but there's a wide gutter.) It's all just advertising on the right, and I run an ad blocker (Privoxy) anyway -- I don't see the ads in the middle column either, just the wootcast link (which I have no use for) and the stats (occasionally interesting).

This way the redesign is a win -- it's far less cluttered, I see no advertising, and I keep the majority of the real estate on my screen for other purposes.

Snapster wrote:more fits on the page. things we have now that we didn't have before and things we'll have in the future. other discussion on pixel density and ideal field of view (though likely unacceptably philisophical for you) are further back in this thread.

There's still some things I'd like changed (like letting me have two columns to type this in, and losing the goofy insult thing), but mostly, I think it's okay. The telling thing is that the server(s) seemed to crash less during this woot-off (where's the danged monkeys? I *love* those monkeys), so on the whole, I'm okay with it.

I've heard vague rumblings from those running IE 8 about CSS not rendering properly, and I'm grateful my ancient Mozilla 1.7.11 doesn't understand 25%-30% of the CSS/Javascript, but on the whole, I'm ready to move on.

Hey, you know how, no matter which page you're on, the Today's Woot is at the bottom corner? How about adding in the other two (or at least the Wine.Woot)? Just a friendly suggestion.


[Edit] 2 Camo Monkeys and 2 Woot off lights. Thanks.

I had no problems with the new design during the woot off. no complaints anymore

I was just trying to figure out what these things were circled in red in my screen capture below, and then I realized they're little scroll bars. It seems like if you have a signature, no matter how big or small, the space allocated for it is just a smidge too small vertically.



I think Woot has gone scroll bar crazy!

Sonan wrote:I was just trying to figure out what these things were circled in red in my screen capture below, and then I realized they're little scroll bars. It seems like if you have a signature, no matter how big or small, the space allocated for it is just a smidge too small vertically.

I think Woot has gone scroll bar crazy!

That one's just you. I don't see the scroll bars on one line signatures, not with mozilla, not with firefox, not with internet exploder 7 (dunno about 8).

Snapster wrote:more fits on the page. things we have now that we didn't have before and things we'll have in the future.

Why stop now??... more things will fit on a 4000 pixel wide screen.

shrdlu wrote:That one's just you. I don't see the scroll bars on one line signatures, not with mozilla, not with firefox, not with internet exploder 7 (dunno about 8).

I was probably using Chrome. Although I'm using Chrome now on a different computer, and the scroll bars are there but look completely different. Weird. I did confirm that IE 7 doesn't show them for me as well.

sfitzjava wrote:Wow, so this new site is like running on some old IBM-XT or something? It is so sloooooowww, and the woot-off meter tends to jump about from full to half, to empty, while always having that "I Want One" button... although I have not seen it work for me the couple of times I've clicked on it.

I'm giving it 2 thumbs down!!!
1) for the Look is not great kinda corp America look... and I think we've seen that's not a good thing.
2) performance / stability seems to be highly suspicious.

-sf

I thought the server performance during the woot-off was very good. Except for those yellow meter bars, the levels several times jumped back up and then down again (as if old data was being cached and resent instead of current levels).

Oh yeah, I still hate the horizontal scroll bars. Even if the pixel density of my monitor goes up in the future, my eyesight is going to demand I increase either the font size or resolution I run at to compensate.

Bottom line is that as long as Woot insists on displaying a wider page than every other site I visit, I will continue to be annoyed.
I multitask with multiple windows open. Most sites fit in the size of window I prefer, Woot doesn't.

unixrab wrote:Why stop now??... more things will fit on a 4000 pixel wide screen.

unixrab, I've spent a lot of time requesting input on this with you directly but you move on and then come back later to jab on the same topic. Again, what is your opinion of the maximum pixel count and/or physical width and/or field of view for webpage content on an imaginary future "screen" with unlimited resolution and size?

I understand completely if you do not wish to invest time in this, but I'd also ask that you state that and move on.

see previous page for our last posts on the matter:
http://www.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.aspx?PostID=2919933&PageIndex=36&ReplyCount=1474#post2966014

In my opinion all aligned in opposition to our width have valid 1a or 1b arguments only. I seek to narrow conversation to those points and stop diversion.

Snapster wrote:In my opinion all aligned in opposition to our width have valid 1a or 1b arguments only. I seek to narrow conversation to those points and stop diversion.

I would like to propose a rewording of opposition point 1b to remove the detailed example of sidebar widgets and simply refer to it as non-full-screen browsing. Many here, myself included, have stated that we don't browse full screen, and that our preferred browser window size, for whatever reasons, stated or otherwise, is narrower than Woot's new site, resulting in horizontal scroll bars. I feel funny calling this a 1b argument, because often I have no other specific content taking up the rest of my screen. In fact, right now I have an absurdly-small gap in my horizontal scroll bar. I have no specific recollection of how my current browser window came to be this size. There's a little bit of desktop showing on the left and a significant amount on the right. Am I too lazy to resize the window the little bit it would take to remove the scroll bar? Maybe, or possibly I'm just not worried about it because I know when I'm done posting this, I'm going to some other site where it won't matter anymore. I think that's the real 1b argument.

Sonan wrote:I would like to propose a rewording of opposition point 1b to remove the detailed example of sidebar widgets and simply refer to it as non-full-screen browsing. Many here, myself included, have stated that we don't browse full screen, and that our preferred browser window size, for whatever reasons, stated or otherwise, is narrower than Woot's new site, resulting in horizontal scroll bars. I feel funny calling this a 1b argument, because often I have no other specific content taking up the rest of my screen. In fact, right now I have an absurdly-small gap in my horizontal scroll bar. I have no specific recollection of how my current browser window came to be this size. There's a little bit of desktop showing on the left and a significant amount on the right. Am I too lazy to resize the window the little bit it would take to remove the scroll bar? Maybe, or possibly I'm just not worried about it because I know when I'm done posting this, I'm going to some other site where it won't matter anymore. I think that's the real 1b argument.

for clarity, here's the current phrasing:

Snapster wrote:...
Moving from that, I would attempt to organize elements of width-decision-dissatisfaction as follows:

1. Today's technological limitations are compelling enough to stop Woot's width expansion:
a. Out of consideration for Woot's audience with 1024 max displays
b. Out of consideration for Woot's audience with >1024 displays that are still not large enough to display Woot @ 1080-wide and sidebar widgets while they browse.

I understand what you're saying - In general it's an argument I was trying to call resolved before concentrating on what I think are the real technology/timing/audience related issues. Still, my 1b is not ideal. Here's an attempt to make the 1b less widget-centric if that's what's not a match for you.

b. Out of consideration for Woot's audience with >1024 displays that due to technology constraint (pixel density or pixel count) have browsers defaulted too narrow to display Woot @ 1080-wide.

I think that makes 1b fit my own use-case when I'm on my macbook and have the scrollbar sometimes (which sounds exactly the same as your above description)

I expect and don't mind if you want to touch back on what I'm trying to exclude from the argument, which is any presumption that website design width for all websites is at it's permanent ideal maximum at 960 pixels wide (the max to generally fit 1024 resolution)

I am also quite ready for continued highlighting that it's Woot's relatively unique width that's the problem. That you could open your browser wider but it's just not often useful to do so. In fact you might say that's the eventual topic I hope to be debating here. I would just like to get as many people on the same page as possible as to how we got there.

JoeDeeDee wrote:ditto to everything said here.

I am back to the site after a long break, partly because of personal stuff, and partly because I just can't stand to look at it. I'm definitely not spending as much time here as I used to. I'm tired of reading this thread, since none of the discussion really matters if the site is still going to look like this. It really does give me a headache to look at it, and I really don't care much about the reasoning behind it.

Less time at woot = fewer purchases from woot. It's that simple.

mmm. yep. me too. That is, I have been away for a while for personal reasons. I came home to look at woot for first time in some months, and I feel totally lost. Nothing is familiar --w ell, what might be familiar is green and grey or something that makes it unfamiliar. It is not just the changes in my life that makes this all look, well, unpleasant, unwelcoming. I really do not like it at all. However, I have no problem with the width, so I shouldn't complain too much, I suppose.

It is just, as was said, not as much fun, no longer somewhere I want to hang out. Ah well, if nothing has been done to change back, improve, correct, or even explain after 37 pages of "I don't like it" comments, I will not expect my comment to tip the scale.

Snapster wrote:I am also quite ready for continued highlighting that it's Woot's relatively unique width that's the problem. That you could open your browser wider but it's just not often useful to do so. In fact you might say that's the eventual topic I hope to be debating here. I would just like to get as many people on the same page as possible as to how we got there.

I'm 100% on this page now and ready to debate it, but I almost have to ask what's the use? The bottom line is that the new layout requires the extra width, and I don't see you going back to Woot 2.0 this late into the game. And a redesign of 3.0 to make it a "normal" width would be quite an undertaking. So what benefit will come from further debating width issues, other than trying to placate both the outspoken and lurking width haters?