[Web4lib] Nielsen's Top 10 - 2005 version

[Thomas Dowling]

Erik Kraft wrote:

> In my original post, I was arguing that it's important, for the sake of
> readability, to be able to control line widths and white space on a
> page.


Erik is right about readability.  The problem is that the vast majority
of web pages that attempt to enforce width restrictions are created by
people who don't think in terms of readability and typographical
concepts like "line length", and couldn't tell you a reasonable way to
measure that length.  As a result, that vast majority really does cause
immense annoyance for anyone whose display environment is not a close
match to the designer's, and the line length (measured in characters per
line) ends up being anywhere from half as wide to twice as wide as the
designer thought he specified.  Readability goes out the door.

Referring back to Nielsen's column, the specific problems his users
identified with fixed page widths were:

  * On big monitors, websites are difficult to use if they don't
    resize with the window. Conversely, if users have a small
    window and a page doesn't use a liquid layout, it triggers
    insufferable horizontal scrolling.

  * The rightmost part of a page is cut off when printing a frozen
    page. This is especially true for Europeans, who use narrower
    paper (A4) than Americans.


I don't think you can deny those are problems with typical fixed-width
pages.  Solve those problems, and you're free to manage line length
issues as you see fit.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu