This is not really a question or problem, just a point for discussion.
There has been a lot of talk about RWD, mainly with regard to making sites mobile friendly. This is not at all surprising, with the arrival of so called ‘Mobilegeddon’, that people make this a priority.
But, should we also be altering our designs to cater for BIGGER screens too?
I’m talking about very hi-res monitors and 4k smart TVs and suchlike.
Does the standard ~1000px wide layout look bad there?
Should we up our max-width: to go responsive the other way?
My opinion is maybe its something to consider for the future, but not an immediate priority.
My analytics show just a few users with screens bigger than 2000px wide, none as big as 3000px.
If my own browsing habits are anything to go by, I rarely have the browser maximised when using a big monitor, though I may do on a smaller laptop.
As for smart TVs. Google Analytics don’t yet seem to tell you about them, they show desktop, tablet and mobile as the 3 device categories. I have never used one, so don’t know what they are like to browse with. I imagine people use them on-line mainly for watching movies and TV shows, not for general web browsing, they may have a tablet within reach for that.
Your thought please.
I worked on a website that used the full width of whatever device you were using. It was a fashion website and we ended up having trouble with scaled images. Sometimes images had to stretch extra wide (and hence long) so it would take more than one full screen to view the entire picture, where in all the fun is lost.
I think designing for a big screen is an exciting arena that we are yet to touch. Imagine the interaction people have with a television. Usually through a mouse or a trackpad. They usually sit far away from the screen too, since its big. It would be an interesting exercise to think of different interaction patterns for this use case.
That said, designing for mobile is far more important. I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about the minority that may access a website from a fridge, in-car touch screen or a huge monitor. People don’t do that as often as they would with a mobile device (which everyone seems to have one nowadays).
So to answer your question, there’s no harm in optimizing for a large screen if you have the bandwidth. But, it’s not your major concern unless you’re like netflix. For most other websites, mobile is where the focus ought to be IMHO.
Hope this helps
Unless I see 40% of my users going into TV size, like mobile is right now, then I don’t imagine changing.
I understand where this is coming from, but I sincerely doubt it will ever get to that point.
That’s kind of what I was thinking, not a priority, but food for thought.
Yes, background images will be a problem, too small and they look bad blown up, too big and they eat bandwidth. That could be dealt with by feeding different size images according to screen size, would think someone who watches on-line HD movies would have good broadband
When doing RWD for desktop and mobile I keep the font size the same, who wants small text? But here it would pay to go bigger.
Though I don’t imagine people viewing text-heavy websites on TV. Possibly it would be better being like a blown up mobile interface, but then you wouldn’t want that on a big computer monitor.
That’s a valid point. I don’t think sitting at a distance, no matter what the font size, TV wouldn’t be used as a reading device? More for images and videos. Yes, this is a good thing to discuss and observe how people interact with TV as a browsing medium.
Totally agree with the bandwidth part. If they are watching netflix on that television, we don’t have to be too concerned about bandwidth for images
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