[thelist] Page width and good web design

[Stephen Rider]

Here's a little experiment:

Pick up a newspaper that uses small columns, (The Wall Street Journal 
is a great example).  Read a column.  Notice how fast your eyes are 
able to scan down the text.

Now hold the page back a bit, and imagine that the text is one giant 
column running from one edge of the page to the other.  You scan across 
a line, and when you reach the end your eyes snap back to the left side 
and... wait... what line were you on?

Extra wide text columns are very awkward to read, for several reasons.  
It's tiring to scan across a long line, it's hard to keep your place, 
and the text seems to read slower -- probably because you literally do 
read slower that way, but also because you're taking longer to move 
down the page....

There are studies on this stuff; I'm sorry I can't point you to any of 
them off the top of my head.

Steve

On Jun 29, 2004, at 5:15 AM, Jason Handby wrote:

> I have a colleague who is proposing to revamp the design of a website 
> to
> make the page 1024 pixels across. My strong feeling is that the new 
> design
> is very difficult to scan and read, because it's just too wide. I've 
> read a
> reasonable number of online murmurings that tend to support that view, 
> but
> I'm having problems finding any definitive research...