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I recall reading a similar HN comment before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414771 I browse the internet

I recall reading a similar HN comment before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414771 I browse the internet full screen, which often makes text blocks far too wide. It's hard to read long lines. Yes, in principle, I could resize the window for every website, but in practice that would be annoying to do. Given current browser capabilities, on my own websites it would probably be best to set a maximum text width rather than a fixed text width. That way I can still adjust the window size to be smaller if I want to. In the future, it would be nice for a user to set their own desired text width (similar to setting the serif or sans-serif font) which could hypothetically be available to websites in CSS like this: max-width: preferred-width;

ryandrake 5y ago
Yes! These things should all be user-controllable preferences, NOT overridable by web site designers. Browsers have ceded way too much control over look and feel to web designers! Ideally, a site like HN would just serve structured text content, and I would get to decide font typeface, text size, margins, color scheme, background image, and so on, from my configured preferences. This should be the browser’s built-in default: I should not have to turn on extensions and plugins just to wrest control back from website designers. At most, website designers should be able to offer a default style for the case where the user did not set preferences, but the user’s preference should always override!
kitsunesoba 5y ago
In UIKit under iOS/iPadOS, there’s a concept known as “readable width” which is dynamic and changes depending on the width of the device’s screen, and apps can take advantage of it to make blocks of text flow in a readable and pleasant way regardless of device form factor and orientation. I think this concept would be immensely useful in the browser. The closest one can get to that currently is to use media queries for a variety of screen widths with hand-tuned content widths, which is laborious and doesn’t leave room for user customization.
WorldMaker 5y ago
I still wish multi-column CSS got more love. (It exists but it has seen more regressions in browser support than fixes for its papercuts.) Newspapers figured out centuries ago that good multi-column layouts are great for reading and it's kind of sad that web-browsers still aren't great at "newspaper" layouts. We could much better take advantage of our wide (and ultra-wide) screens with nice multi-column layouts than anything we could get away with just max-width alone.
mr_mitm 5y ago
Wasn't the idea that the user could supply their own CSS? I vaguely remember old browsers offering an option for that.

ryandrake 5y ago

Yes! These things should all be user-controllable preferences, NOT overridable by web site designers. Browsers have ceded way too much control over look and feel to web designers! Ideally, a site like HN would just serve structured text content, and I would get to decide font typeface, text size, margins, color scheme, background image, and so on, from my configured preferences. This should be the browser’s built-in default: I should not have to turn on extensions and plugins just to wrest control back from website designers. At most, website designers should be able to offer a default style for the case where the user did not set preferences, but the user’s preference should always override!

kitsunesoba 5y ago

In UIKit under iOS/iPadOS, there’s a concept known as “readable width” which is dynamic and changes depending on the width of the device’s screen, and apps can take advantage of it to make blocks of text flow in a readable and pleasant way regardless of device form factor and orientation. I think this concept would be immensely useful in the browser. The closest one can get to that currently is to use media queries for a variety of screen widths with hand-tuned content widths, which is laborious and doesn’t leave room for user customization.

WorldMaker 5y ago

I still wish multi-column CSS got more love. (It exists but it has seen more regressions in browser support than fixes for its papercuts.) Newspapers figured out centuries ago that good multi-column layouts are great for reading and it's kind of sad that web-browsers still aren't great at "newspaper" layouts. We could much better take advantage of our wide (and ultra-wide) screens with nice multi-column layouts than anything we could get away with just max-width alone.

mr_mitm 5y ago

Wasn't the idea that the user could supply their own CSS? I vaguely remember old browsers offering an option for that.