[thelist] Page width and good web design

Tim Beadle tim.beadle at iop.org
Tue Jun 29 05:41:31 CDT 2004


On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 11:15, 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...
> 
> Can someone point me in the direction of good research and information?
> Also, if any of you have strong views one way or the other I'd be interested
> in hearing them.

It's generally held to be true in page layout (both in print and on the
web) that the ideal line length is about 12 words due to the "physiology
of the eye" [0].

Online, it's also important to (a) cut copy in half and (b) increase
line-height, which substantially increases readability.

If you use elastic design [1], you can set your column width to be
proportional to the visitor's font size.

I think 1024 wide is a bad idea anyway: a lot of people still use
800x600, but hardly any use 640x480 these days. Also bear in mind that
more people are using hand-held devices (phones/PDAs etc), so
device-specific CSS is a good idea.

Tim

[0] http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/em/
[1] http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elastic/
-- 
Tim Beadle, Information Systems Developer
Institute of Physics Publishing
Dirac House, Temple Back
Bristol BS1 6BE, UK
tel +44 (0)117 930 1262
<tim.beadle at iop.org>
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