User blog comment:Susanolivia/Fixed Width, Sidebar, and the Removal of Monaco/@comment-1689515-20101001050943

I come from Final Fantasy Wiki. I have to say this: 660 pixels of width is just not enough. That space limitation is simply incompatible with many of our tables. We have too much information in them, none of which can be cut out without sacrificing vital info.

Now, really, I can get the argument that you want wikis to look the same for everyone. It's not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is that the sidebar takes up far too much space. 1000px is a generous amount of content space and would be great for most articles on its own. Losing a third of it just for a dedicated place to put ads causes more problems than it solves.

Now, there are alternatives. Things don't need to go away. They just need to free up space.

So here's my solution:

1. Floating ads are no worse than normal images. They don't NEED a sidebar. I will come right out and say that I'd prefer a floating ad to having a sidebar dominating what should be the content area. Content on a wiki should be king. Floating ads allow that to remain the case.

2. The sidebar doesn't have to go completely. It's a simple matter of writing an OnMouseOver to extend it in Javascript. Or, if you want to save on resources, simply make an option to collapse and return it with a click event. The articles need not even have the full run of the 1000px you've allotted to the page. Even 800 would grant a precious two inches more. The sidebar could be as small as only 100 pixels wide without losing vital info. That's standard avatar width on most forums. You can do a lot with that. If it's not enough, even 150px while collapsed would be a Godsend for wikis like Final Fantasy's.

3. A hybrid approach is possible. If you need to, you can create a content pane specifically to hold ads and then allow the sidebar to be collapsed.

This issue really boils down to choice. I'm asking you to consider allowing us the choice of the sidebar taking up a third of the fixed space. More choice is always better, and there are elegant solutions that could make everyone happy, or at least happier. The code to allow for this isn't that complex. I'm a developer myself. I've done this kind of thing. The sidebar doesn't need to go away. It just needs a way of getting smaller. The overhead for this would be minimal. Please consider this.