Text width

On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 10:25:15AM +0100, Rotan Hanrahan wrote:
> Keep posting to the list, as the material here is guaranteed to persist
> (in accordance with W3C philosophy), whereas your blog is neither
> guaranteed to be fixed nor persistent.

You're quite correct. :)

Ok, here goes from Web Blog -> RSS -> Email -> List:



When I resized my blog or say Ian's[3] for a bigger screen (i.e. zoomed
out), I imagined the text was scaling for the larger screen size. The
fact that lines were getting longer, meant that the text was taking full
advantage (i.e.  scaling) for the larger screen size. 

The register[4] posts also get longer lines when zooming out. Pretend
viewing the post on a cinema screen.

Although the lines are scaling *UP* to the larger screensize, it is not
helping accessibility[5].  Why? Because this line length[6] style guide
tells that  normal reading distances the eye's span of acute focus is
only about three inches wide.  Wide lines (roughly over 60 characters)
get *difficult to read*, *less usable* and hence *less accessible*. 

Mika again pointed out to me that optimal line width depends on: 

- reading distance 
- font size 

Ok, what does this mean for mobiles? I think this is good news. If we
read *within* three inches, and the mobile screen is typically one inch
square (128x128), then there is no need to panic. 

For desktops with bigger screens (17+ inches now?) it has of course had
an impact. That's why banner sizes are 468 pixels wide[7] and many sites
operate complex tables emulating magazine columns. _This now affects
mobiles._ How do you scale a two column (at least 6 inches) desktop
designed webpage to a screen sized the third of a three inch column of a
mobile? 

So how can we solve this problem? 

- Re-adaption (guess and pray[8]). 
- Let the author worry about it. (let him do a bunch of different style sheets 
for media types or just one style sheet for one device and forget the rest) 
- Let the device user agent worry about it 

I am in favour of 3rd option. Better UAs to solve this problem. Let the
UA agent in corporation with device vendor take responsibility for
making the page readable and usable. The more pressure you put on
authors to scale their text properly for devices they've never seen is
*unreasonable*. Authors should be just writing content. Just think how
good it would have been if browsers (or some other application) could
help you navigate instead of crappy author's menu struggling to fill in
the void with inconsistent results that usually jeopardise
accessibility.

UAs can solve the font size problem. The vendor is in the best position
to determine whether a 120% is not as legible as the same font at 112%
on a particular device. One down. As for reading distance, I think it's
probably more of a text flow problem. It's not an easy problem to solve
but UAs are best positioned to do so, don't you think?



[1] http://natalian.org/archives/2004/05/29/debian-display/
[2] http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/mraento/symbian/bt-ap.html
[3] http://ln.hixie.ch/
[4] http://www.theregister.co.uk/
[5] http://www.w3.org/WAI/
[6] http://www.webstyleguide.com/type/lines.html
[7] http://www.opera.com/products/smartphone/smallscreen/
[8] http://www.w3.org/2000/10/DIAWorkshop/dia-realistic.html

URL: http://natalian.org/archives/2004/06/09/text-width/

Received on Wednesday, 9 June 2004 05:49:15 UTC