Technology does not ceate to make progress. Your computer monitors are no exception to this rule either: they are bigger, with an higher resolution and flat. But there is one huge difference: the aspect ratio is not the same.

For some obscure reasons image formats of screens have evolved again. They went from 4/3, the historical cathodic format to 16/10 and now 16 / 9, and soon the 1/2.35 cinema format ? Each time the same misleading excuse is given: "it's better when you watch a movie" or "this way you'll have more space" etc ... Just as if movie industry was the only one allowed to have demands. And for those who do not watch movies ? Well, you must do with a lesser and lesser high screen !

Yet the majority of applications have a menu that is horizontal and located at the top of the window screen. Take your favorite browser: before accessing the site itself you have - from top to bottom - the title bar, the window menu, the navigation bar with web addresses and optionally your favorites, then all the tabs for navigation and - finally - the web page ! You lose about 130 pixels high on your resolution to do much more since it is more and more rectangular.

For a web designer taking this excessive width in account is often a problem: how to furnish it ? It is often not possible to put too much important information in the extreme edges of the window. Therein lies the paradox : more screens grow, the harder it is to organize the space of a website because of the excessive width of the screen. The result is that more and more space is lost ! We can't wait the moment when a manufacturer offers square screens for workers that actually work and don't watch movies on their computers !

In the meantime we have to deal with it, so the solution is to distribute the information according to their level of importance and place them according to the visibility of each area of the screen. Do not forget that if we use a fluid layout the behavior of the site will be different depending on the size of the display window. Emphasize important information at the center of the display of the site and place secondary information in an area below reachable by scrolling or on an another page. Forget the rule of the three clicks that did not always make much sense in highly technical product catalogs for example. A good segmentation and a one line recall of the position of the user is often preferable to the proliferation of possible entries in order to meet this so-called rule.