Use F11 Key to Enjoy Enticing Web Design

Since way back in 2008, websites with large backgrounds started to crop up more and more.  However, certain limitations such as bandwidth and consumer expectations/norms were holding them back from being mainstream. Today, with Flash losing popularity to Javascript libraries and smartphones getting smarter, the big background website is booming. As this approach becomes more of a permanent fixture on the web, "full screen mode" on traditional browsers (laptop/desktop) helps heighten the experience. Try it out.

The F11 Key

On most browsers, the F11 key will "full screen mode" the current web page. More than just a convenient way to instantly "maximize" your browser window, it gets rid of all the pesky navigation and window edges. It makes the website display more like a DVD menu screen.

Big whup? Not on the right website. If you're at a website that highlights creativity, chances are your eyes will relax with your increased sense of satisfaction after you've struck the F11 key.

Tech Trends Towards Full Screen Viewing

People are getting used to the idea of full screen web surfing. Smartphones, gaming systems, and other web ready multimedia centers already do it. These alternatives to the traditional laptop/desktop surfing experience are simultaneously providing very small and very large screens, from the hand held to that big-ass TV.

This is a new type of an old problem.


To more conservative designers and developers, solving this issue of both a big and small resolution appears to be nothing new; they swear by the method of using a mobile template for displaying website content viewed by a smartphone. Other developers, on the other hand, have taken note that a mobile template is often a glorified version of viewing a well-built website with CSS/scripts turned off.

The reason for this simple observation stems from the fact that mobile-only templates are just as ugly as a website built in 1995. Sometimes this can't be avoided. Corporate websites, for example, may be too complex.  But if you observe where smartphones are heading -- with particular attention to the zooming and panning features -- using the mobile-only solution often needlessly forces someone who has just dropped $200+ on a fancy phone to look at a garbage website. Some reward.

A website should be built to support accessibility and SEO purposes anyway and therefore support "no style" viewing. By building a highly standards-compliant site, developers have a catch-all for older web-ready phones and can focus attention on the fancier ones.

This broadens the horizon for the savvy developer looking to build feature-rich experiences that work nearly the same on screens in the living room or the office, or in the hand.

Forward-Thinking Design: Dynamic All-In-One


Some experts -- those fuddy-duddy conservative types -- will go out of their way to encourage the mobile-only approach.  What I hear is a claim to always design as though the world is flat!

To the more Galilean of us, it is more like "you simply can't please everyone to the same degree," the world is 3 dimensional and dynamic! Therefore, dynamically turn off large elements only when necessary to avoid needless bandwidth wastage. After that, go nuts.

So forward-thinking contemporary web developers are building sites where the core functionality fit nicely inside a smartphone's screen with supportive visual elements (backgrounds) that fill much larger resolutions. Smartphones can zoom and pan, desktops can "full screen." Everyone's happier.

Visually speaking, websites built with compressed/"stretch-to-fill" content areas and large backgrounds are like Shrek's layered onions. This approach often leads to cleverly constructed visual experiences with powerful photo-painting backgrounds that start strong and build with every increase in resolution. 

So next time you're on your laptop or desktop and surfing a site where the background's details extend beyond the confines of that browser's ghastly window border, free yourself and the website, full screen your browser!