[WEB4LIB] Re: Pixel sizes for web pages

[Leonard Will]

In article <4.1.19990820100858.00a4b220 at pop.delphi.com>, on Fri, 20 Aug
1999 at 07:30:20, Walt Howe <URL: mailto:walthowe at delphi.com> writes
>At 03:49 AM 19-08-99 -0700, Leonard Will wrote, in part:
>>I use a 17" monitor at 1152 x 864 pixels, and I find it irritating to
>>see pages that occupy the middle half of my screen with wide blank
>>margins on either side, They often have text forced into narrow columns,
>>requiring much more vertical scrolling than would be necessary if HTML
>>had been used properly.
>
>I must counter your argument. I find it very irritating to be forced to
>read wide columns of text that scroll across the full width of the screen.
>I deliberately design text oriented pages to column widths of 400 pixels or
>so for best readablilty.

>Good design will break up pages so that little vertical scrolling is
>required anyway, but if I must present a long text document on one page, I
>will keep the columns at a readable width.
>
Yes, I don't disagree with what you say. A cleanly-designed page with
two or three columns of text is fine and I agree that a single column
the whole width of my screen is uncomfortable because of the length of
the line that has to be scanned.

What I object to are fussy sites that cram vertical frames, menus, logos
and tables containing bits of text, often multicoloured, into a fixed
width of 800 pixels or less. The columns of text then are often a few
words wide so that a single paragraph runs off the bottom of the screen.
If they used relative sizes they would be able to expand where space is
available and thus become more readable.

As far as I know HTML cannot "flow" text into newspaper-style columns
when different screen sizes are used, so it may be best to keep the main
text to a single column, of perhaps 60-70% of the screen width, and use
the rest to display structure, such as headings and subheadings,
annotations or illustrations.

Leonard Will
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