On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:19:29 -0400, Miro Jurisic wrote
People who insist on saying that fixed width wastes spaces are usually trying to solve the wrong problem. If you are reading text, how much space is wasted is usually irrelevant -- the relevant
I still disagree with this -- there are precious few pixels on the monitor. The density of information is much lower than a printed page. Wasting space leads to poor user interaction.
qualities are your ability to quickly scan for important information and to read the content efficiently. Making lines arbitrarily long compromises your ability to read efficiently even though it makes more text fit on your screen.
Well you can say that, but resize the page -- there's lots of wasted whitespace with fixed width. With fixed width the publisher is in control -- with variable with the user is in control. If you like short lines it is easy to adjust your browser window size to achieve the desired effect. If I want wide lines I can do that.
...snip...
My opinion is that the text should by default be set to a maximum width, because I believe that the default layout should emphasize readability, not spatial efficiency.
I favor user control over publisher control. Jeff ps: In case you can't tell this one is a pet peeve of mine -- I really, really dislike fixed width sites. Let's not make Boost one of them.