[Sigia-l] width limits for a body of text

[George Olsen]

James Kalback said:
> If you are working with a fluid design you need
> to consider a *range* of readable lengths. A 100-
> character text column in a browser opened to a
> width of 800 pixels may "unwrap" to 125+ characters
> at a width of 1024 pixels, which may then
> be too longer than you want.

It's also worth mentioning that the traditional method of maintaining
readability in print graphic design is to compensate for long lines by to
increase leading (aka line-height in CSS) -- and potentially increase the
size of the text as well.

While coding variations of the entire layout is generally not that
practical -- as I think Jim will attest to -- I think minor adjustments
based on window size are doable and beneficial.

Essentially you can set a default leading, then use some JavaScript to
override it based on window size so that the leading is better optimized
to the . If the user doesn't have JS enabled, or has a window size that's
not recognized, then it reverts back to the default. A similar approach
could be used to set some limits on column minimum/maximum size to help
maintain readable widths.

Not "purist" liquid design, more like "jello" design.