| Typography & Line length |
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 this thread forked from Web Design for Different Display SizesWritten by Ian Petrie December 29, 2005 > Perhaps we should start another thread on 'What is > the most comfortable text width on the screen display'." - Viggie Bala, Web Design for Different Display Sizes Since the invention of writing, each new technology designed to display text has gone through a similar development - before, universally, settling down to some very similar standards. From parchment scrolls to the Internet, we are the same evolved apes and are looking through the same eyes and processing the information with the same simian brains - not suprisingly, some common truths can be applied. Printing. That's been around for a while. What have the printers come up with? Go into any bookshop. Why do the books look so similar? Why do they stack so well on the shelves? Maybe its because the publishers get a really really good deal on paper that size - or maybe it's because that is the size of page which best suits the way that people find easiest to read. Open a book at random - and another, and another. Count the number of characters on a full line - one that reaches right across the printed area. I've just done so from my bookshelves. A copy of "Scenes of Clerical life" by george Elliot, printed in 1909 has 62 characters per line - a childrens paperback from a hundred years later has 48. If you search for 'Typography' or 'typesetting' and 'line length' there is lots of information available. A common conclusion is that the ideal line length is 66 characters. This site ( which I have no connection with ) provides an excellent discussion on setting line length to retain readability in various browser widths and type sizes - much better than I can do: http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/. This link, in particular, stood out as it looks at CSS solutions for displaying varying type sizes. Ian Petrie MD Vetlist Ltd Written by Bill Davison January 2, 2006 I wonder if many are not forgetting - if you use one of your fancy fonts in text on your website - that fancy font may not appear on the viewer's screen! That is because that person's computer may not have that fancy font in their library and therefore, will automatically go to their default font. Yes, you can insure the fancy font appears if you include it in a graphic but too many graphics make the site display SLOWLY! Speed, speed and more speed is the name of the game in today's internet website design. This of course means those with the clever Macromedia movies often impress the teeny boppers, and yes, they win art awards but... they lose sales. Bill Davison bizwebpage.com Comments (0)
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