I've been looking into getting a rotatable monitor because of a number of these things. A few thoughts:
On 01/07/07, David Abrahams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > * long lines pose well-known and proven readability hurdles Completely agree. 1680 and such is FAR too wide to read 12-point text. If I have a fair bit of reading to do, I often scale it up to 24, 36, or higher just so my eye can actually do its horizontal retrace effectively. > * Since line breaks are fixed in code, if code examples *do* follow > the guidelines, a wide browser window really wastes a lot of space. > Yet we are not using a fixed-width layout primarily because some > people complain vociferously that we're preventing them from using > screen real-estate efficiently. Unfortunately, many sites (google pages and many news sites are notably bad, here) that do use a fixed layout make it impossible to scale up the text for readability, since you end up with once 2 or 3 words on a line, and it just looks terrible. And I have good eyes, but still don't like reading small text. My web browser is set to default to 18-point fonts, prevents sites from forcing them explicitly, and a minimum size of 10 pt. This tends to make most fixed-size layouts very unhappy. > http://beta.boost.org/ currently uses a CSS-only design that > dynamically rearranges columns according to the width of your > browser. However, the text does not flow across these columns, so > that approach isn't really appropriate for many of our pages. I also abhor columns on a computer, unless it's absolutely certain that I will not have to scroll (which I don't think it can ever be). Even in PDFs it's a pain to scroll up to get back to the top of the page. If a website had the whole thing in columns, it'd be even worse. > http://randysimons.com/pagina_129_NL.xhtml actually approaches my > ideal for handling this problem. For me that seems to make scrolling deathly slow. > Thoughts? I have, at times, seen specified-width layouts that use ems (or something), and once I realize that they're done properly, they're very nice. If CSS can set the width of the main content div to 80 ems (or something, maybe more), I'd go for it. It should be possible to have alternative or print style sheets without the width limitation that people could use if they were really against the restriction. ~ Scott McMurray ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Boost-docs mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe and other administrative requests: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/boost-docs
