A review of our peers shows that we’re playing on a very constrained canvas — the UC Berkeley NewsCenter is 770 pixels wide, while the average of our peers is roughly 950 px, with some sites ranging as wide as 1,145 px.
Our relatively narrow page is a relic of the NewsCenter’s age — standard monitor sizes were much smaller back in 2002. But while bigger is in many ways better (or at least more modern), there is also something of a pushback these days as more and more people access websites with tiny-screened mobile devices. Your iPhone can load a 1,500-pixel-wide page, but will you be able to read the type without squeezing and scrolling?
Just write your code so that it detects whether a reader is accessing the site via a mobile device and feed them the appropriate format. Big and bold for those browsing from their laptops via Firefox or another browser. Compact, and neatly conforming to zoomable columns for those checking in by phone or iPod. The strategy is becoming common and is less work (after the initial design) than you might think. Just two different forms for the same excellent content.