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

[Boniface Lau]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> Behalf Of Listera
>  
> "George Olsen" wrote:
> 
> > Designers have been aiding readers of print with these sorts of
> > behind-the-scenes adjustments for centuries, why shouldn't they do
> > the same on-screen?
> 
> Because there's this thought that the web is not/should not be
> designer driven but totally user controlled. We are supposed to take
> leave of our years of experience/acculturation with movies, TV,
> print and other media and pretend that the creators of the material
> should not be able to shape the experience for their audience. Users
> know best. :-)

I believe the so called "users know best" is based on several factors.

First, in traditional media, users have no control over page layout
issues such as font face and size. But web browsers allow users to set
their default font and size for rendering a page.

Second, the recommendation on a maximum line width or length is very
much a general recommendation for the average user population. But
there is no "average" users. The traditional media designers adopt a
general recommendation because they have to choose "one" line length
for use in a fixed media. But the web media is not fixed. The user
population has different monitor sizes, resolutions, font faces, font
sizes, browser window sizes, etc.

Third, there is a lot that the client-side environment is not telling
a web page about the user setting. For example, it is very difficult
for a web page to find out the default font face, size, monitor 
width (not resolution), and DPI. Without knowing those basic parameters, 
it is very difficult to set a reasonable line width. Of course, a web 
page can override the user default font face and size. But that is 
very hostile to the users.

Thus, with the current technology limitation, the best is to leave the
line length issue to the users. Users know best because they know
their default font face, size, monitor size, DPI, etc.

In fact, because there are so many web sites overriding the default
font faces, sizes, and imposing a certain line width, I have seen more
and more users taking matters into their own hands by overriding the
web page specified font faces and sizes. Some users even override the
text column's width specification so that the width is no longer fixed
but is determined by the browser window width.


Boniface