[thelist] DEBATE: Fixed Width Vs Liquid

[Rob Sylvan]

A good question. After a quick search on Google (using: text readability
long lines) the consensus on the first 10 links was to keep lines of text to
an average of 9 - 12 words per line or around 60 characters per line.

What I found even more interesting was that quite a few of these pages used
a liquid layout design that caused their text lines to run 25 words per (or
so) line on my 1280x1024 monitor.

Do as I say, or do as I do?

It has certainly been *my* experience that shorter lines are easier to read
because I will sometimes have trouble finding the next line of text after
the long journey back from the right side of my monitor. But perhaps that's
just me.

Best of luck,

Rob



-----Original Message-----
From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On
Behalf Of Ken Kogler
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 12:22 PM
To: thelist
Subject: [thelist] DEBATE: Fixed Width Vs Liquid

I've come up with a (mostly) liquid design for a site I'm working on. (I say
"mostly" because with the graphical elements, the minimum with is something
like 600px. It's not truly liquid).

The graphics department here says that a 100% width is "ugly" and "not
readable" because "users don't want to read long lines of text." They're
insisting I keep        to a 750px static width on every page.

Arguments for or against this? I'm all for the liquid design, but I can't
quite formulate an argument powerful enough to disprove the know-it-all
graphics department.

-Ken

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