[thelist] Counting words on a site

Burhan Khalid burhankhalid at members.evolt.org
Thu Mar 28 17:12:01 CST 2002


[ snip ]
[By the way, after doing this on dozens of sites, we found a
>strong correlation between page density and success. The denser
>the sites, the more likely users found what they were seeking. This
>was part of our finding that whitespace in page design makes sites
>less usable.  In case you cared why we were counting words.]

[ /snip ]

I'd like to take this one up. Whitespace does not make websites less
usable.  It just spreads out the content so it be...oddly enough...spaced
out.  Imagine a website with no or minimal white spacing, it would be very
hard for the human reader to decipher it and pick out the information that
he wanted.  This goes along the same lines as coding practices. The
compiler doesn't care if your entire _______ (insert favorite programming
language here) program is in one line or three pages. It will compile it
the same way. The reason we use whitespace is so that for a human that is
reading it, the content becomes easy to comprehend. Is that not going
towards better usability?

--Burhan




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