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There is a reason the majority of news sites (well, any good news site) limits the width of text; wide text is hard to read. Although the HN version that lists

There is a reason the majority of news sites (well, any good news site) limits the width of text; wide text is hard to read. Although the HN version that lists everything with just the title is great, but the actual post display is awful, even though it's supposed to be inheriting how HN displays posts it should still be limited :(

tcfast 15y ago
i've limited it to 800px
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
JoshTriplett 15y ago
That's a common opinion, yes. Some users prefer to actually take advantage of their screen width to read more content at a time. It also proves particularly convenient when trying to skim for particular information without reading everything. Part of the justification for using narrow columns relates to the difficulty of finding the starting point of the next line when your eyes jump a large distance to the left. That advice applies quite well to books, and much less well to more structured content. For instance, on Hacker News, most comments don't have a wall of text with no paragraph breaks, and comments have strong delineation, so a narrow text width doesn't actually help. That said, if you have the type of content for which a narrow text width does help (which TechCrunch sometimes does), please don't limit it to a specific pixel width; please use em instead, so that the width gets larger with the font size. That way, when users hit Ctrl-+ to override a site's smaller-than-the-browser's-default font size, the site will show about the same amount of text on each line, rather than producing narrower lines as the font grows.
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  >That way, when users hit Ctrl-+ to override a site's smaller-than-the-browser's-default font size, the site will show about the same amount of text on each line, rather than producing narrower lines as the font grows. That is stale 2008 advice. Every browser but ie6 uses zoom to resize pages. Text is resized on ctrl-+ regardless of px vs em. The days of sizing things with em's is long over, and these days it is counter-productive.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Text is resized, but not necessarily content. Also note that that behavior is configurable in several browsers, including Firefox, for people who don't want to have to choose between reasonably sized text and crisp non-fuzzy images. Also, many browsers that support zooming don't necessarily let that zooming override a size specified in px. In any case, why would specifying the width of a column of text in em be "counter-productive"?
    - jcampbell1 15y ago
      Because relative units are a painful and time consuming to deal with, thus counter-productive. How wide is the element that is 20em wide, that is contained by an element that is 20em wide? Yes, that is a trick question (it depends on the browser, and the css of other elements on the page). How wide is an element that is 200px wide that is contained by an element that is 200px wide? The answer is straightforward - 200px. In terms of CSS these days, 1px != 1 screen pixel.
    - tiddchristopher 15y ago
      In addition to jcampbell1's remarks, which are completely correct, the zooming override issue you mention is, in my experience, nonexistent. I may be wrong, but I have not recently* encountered it on FF, IE, Opera, nor Chrome. Em sizing is counterproductive because 1. That's not how most designers think, (We use Points, Pica, and Pixels.), 2. It's unnecessary for scaling with normally configured browsers, and 3. If someone changes their default type size, I am NOT going to support them: they have full knowledge of how to change the setting to fix a suboptimal page, and they have chosen to have suboptimal pages in the majority of their browsing (You think leading and optimal line width don't matter just as much as text size?) To anyone who actually forces their typeface choice: please do so on a site-by-site basis--or at least typeface-by-typeface for those you find illegible. Please do not try to override the informed choices of typographically-aware designers. Sorry if that sounded like a rant. :) I'm a designer, and I'm passionate about my work being displayed and read the way I designed it to. Otherwise, I'd give every user a typeface selection screen when they visit my websites. The fact is, average users don't make informed choices. *Within the past three years.

tcfast 15y ago

i've limited it to 800px

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

JoshTriplett 15y ago

That's a common opinion, yes. Some users prefer to actually take advantage of their screen width to read more content at a time. It also proves particularly convenient when trying to skim for particular information without reading everything. Part of the justification for using narrow columns relates to the difficulty of finding the starting point of the next line when your eyes jump a large distance to the left. That advice applies quite well to books, and much less well to more structured content. For instance, on Hacker News, most comments don't have a wall of text with no paragraph breaks, and comments have strong delineation, so a narrow text width doesn't actually help. That said, if you have the type of content for which a narrow text width does help (which TechCrunch sometimes does), please don't limit it to a specific pixel width; please use em instead, so that the width gets larger with the font size. That way, when users hit Ctrl-+ to override a site's smaller-than-the-browser's-default font size, the site will show about the same amount of text on each line, rather than producing narrower lines as the font grows.

jcampbell1 15y ago
>That way, when users hit Ctrl-+ to override a site's smaller-than-the-browser's-default font size, the site will show about the same amount of text on each line, rather than producing narrower lines as the font grows. That is stale 2008 advice. Every browser but ie6 uses zoom to resize pages. Text is resized on ctrl-+ regardless of px vs em. The days of sizing things with em's is long over, and these days it is counter-productive.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Text is resized, but not necessarily content. Also note that that behavior is configurable in several browsers, including Firefox, for people who don't want to have to choose between reasonably sized text and crisp non-fuzzy images. Also, many browsers that support zooming don't necessarily let that zooming override a size specified in px. In any case, why would specifying the width of a column of text in em be "counter-productive"?
  - jcampbell1 15y ago
    Because relative units are a painful and time consuming to deal with, thus counter-productive. How wide is the element that is 20em wide, that is contained by an element that is 20em wide? Yes, that is a trick question (it depends on the browser, and the css of other elements on the page). How wide is an element that is 200px wide that is contained by an element that is 200px wide? The answer is straightforward - 200px. In terms of CSS these days, 1px != 1 screen pixel.
  - tiddchristopher 15y ago
    In addition to jcampbell1's remarks, which are completely correct, the zooming override issue you mention is, in my experience, nonexistent. I may be wrong, but I have not recently* encountered it on FF, IE, Opera, nor Chrome. Em sizing is counterproductive because 1. That's not how most designers think, (We use Points, Pica, and Pixels.), 2. It's unnecessary for scaling with normally configured browsers, and 3. If someone changes their default type size, I am NOT going to support them: they have full knowledge of how to change the setting to fix a suboptimal page, and they have chosen to have suboptimal pages in the majority of their browsing (You think leading and optimal line width don't matter just as much as text size?) To anyone who actually forces their typeface choice: please do so on a site-by-site basis--or at least typeface-by-typeface for those you find illegible. Please do not try to override the informed choices of typographically-aware designers. Sorry if that sounded like a rant. :) I'm a designer, and I'm passionate about my work being displayed and read the way I designed it to. Otherwise, I'd give every user a typeface selection screen when they visit my websites. The fact is, average users don't make informed choices. *Within the past three years.