[thelist] Page width and good web design

[Rob Smith]

<snip author="Stephen">
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....
</snip>

A general rule of thumb in technical writing is to keep your character limit
at 80. Do not have more than 17 words in a sentence and no more than 8 lines
in a paragraph.

Design around this. You'll realize that most often, you'll want to design
around the 800 x 600 size. I do not foresee this going away anytime soon,
unless the human intelligence changes.

Rob.