Long sidebars must die.
Four years ago, Jakob Nielsen boldly declared, “Splash screens must die.” He was right, and won. Today, the splash screen is something of an endangered species on the Web. (The exception to the rule is with advertising agencies, which should pretty much be wiped off the face of the earth anyhow.)
The legacy of Jakob Nielsen
Nielsen’s splash screen stance was the second best thing he ever said. The best thing he ever said concerned intranets. This:
The average mid-sized company could gain $5 million per year in employee productivity by improving its intranet design to the top quartile level of a cross-company intranet usability study.”
…is beautiful. Jakob’s crusade for intranet usability has been less successful than his jihad against splash screens.
Long sidebars must die
Today, I’d like to issue my own Jakob Nielsen-style fatwa: Long sidebars must die.
Yes, I know it is tempting. One more link. One more icon. One more chicklet.
Resist. The. Urge.
It seems to be worst among the popular, “A list” (oh LORD I hate that term). For example, Darren Rowse’s blog—probably my favorite on the Web—is one of the worst offenders. If others try to get a lot of work done in their sidebars, Darren is trying to hold down a second job with his. Tone it down, buddy.
The ROI is not there, folks. Focus on content. Makes everyone’s lives easier. It gets your readers to the point faster, and if you run ads, it improves your CTR, too.
That’s it. Long sidebars must die.
p.s.
You can pretty much ignore the rest of what Nielsen wrote. He’s a clown.
April 17th, 2006 at 6:08 pm
you’re right - my sidebar is too long but it’s largely because I’m a part of a blog network with 100 blogs. We’re working on a new way to show links to all our blogs though so hopefully in the coming month or so we’ll be able to rectify it.
April 18th, 2006 at 3:30 am
tom what is a splash screen, please stop posting nerdy things. only rants about dicky v and hating michigan
April 18th, 2006 at 8:58 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash_screen
April 18th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Here are a few potential rules of thumb that sidebars should not do:
1.) Extend further south than the main content column
2.) Have more than 200 words
3.) Vertically span more that 1.5 pages or “folds”
As long as we’re heaping it on here, Darren’s homepage sidebar has 514 words and 3481 characters and spans 10 pages down. It is shorter than the main content column however. :)
April 18th, 2006 at 11:09 am
It’s become something of a religious quest of mine to get that damn sidebar trimmed up. At this moment in time (18 Apr 2006), it’s tiny by blog standards. I see two advantages to this:
More breathing room as one scrolls down. This helps to keep the focus on the content and establish a sense of “place” as one moves vertically.
Space for skyscraper ads. Yeah, I’m a sellout.