500px max-width

[pepasflo]

Hello,

It looks like the main page content now has a CSS max-width attribute of 500px. This makes things more difficult to read, especially where it induces awkward wrapping, e.g. http://wiki.c2.com/?PicoLisp

Can we remove this width limitation and leave the choice of page width up to the user?

[CaterpyOwO]

I suggest that the CSS on the #page container is just slightly altered, to be wider as well as horizontally centered to improve readability e.g.

#page {
    max-width: 800px;
    margin: 15px auto;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

[WardCunningham]

I chose 500 after studying the word count on typical pages and applying the heuristic of 10 words per line.

http://wiki.c2.com/?TenWordLine

Much of the content on wiki was authored when computer screens were 640 pixels wide. 500 is a good match once browser and window borders are taken into account. The sample quoted was regretfully written as pre-formatted text rather than as a block quote which would have filled gracefully.

[btrower]

As a global design principle, the user rules. The discussions on that page show all kinds of different user requirements that are best satisfied by vanilla text. It makes me crazy when designers enforce arbitrary and unnecessary limitations on users because they lack experience, understanding, and imagination. From this, you get 'user engagement' crap that does things like float hearts across the page to get your attention and brittle pages that break any time something changes -- witness the vast number of pages that are unreadable on mobile devices like phones. Defaults should be 'best guess' vanilla and reasonably controllable by the user. Web browsers offer significant latitude to change how things are displayed, but not if hobbled by arbitrary enforcement of styles. Once upon a time, I had 20/11 vision. When working in 1995, I used the finest font available on our monitors so I could fit as much code on one line as possible without wrapping. The people I worked with could not read it at all. Now, I have something on the order of 20/40 vision and sometimes worse when I am tired. If you look at the image on the post linked below you will see how my needs with respect to the display changed enough over the years that early stuff is not even readable to me any more. I am a single person and being unable to alter a display that I found fine at one point leaves me unable to read the content. People vary widely in their needs and desires. The fact a designer can't 'grok' a particular need that has been asked for does not mean the need is not real and can be ignored. The 'ten word' rule is a great one for me. I have six monitors on my workstation and one of them is a portrait mode monitor on an adjustable vesa wall mount that I can put in just the right position to create a readable narrow column of text. The link that you referred to was an easy read for me, despite fairly compromised vision. I think that it is great if people can, like I did, adjust so they can see a column of text like that. I think that it is not so great if that 'one size' that fits me so well is enforced in code. Even for me, there is no guarantee that, when I finally go to read such text, the display will be good for me.

One of the things that I have liked about C2 over the years is its clean, simple design. Having spent some time designing web pages, I do not trust cutesy 'flavor of the month' designs. They amuse the web developer and perhaps their customer, but that amusement is fleeting as standards, implementations, users, and target devices change.

If people are simply hell-bent on using elaborate style sheets to support their current aesthetics, you should implement content as simply as possible and create a mechanism whereby users can supply their own stylesheets or at least revert to something completely vanilla.

[Note that blogger, below, leaves something to be desired, but it has the advantage of being maintained by others for nothing and staying in place despite years of neglect]

Image and explanation here:

https://blog.bobtrower.com/2020/06/vision-changes-with-aging.html

Cheers!

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020 at 10:33 AM Ward Cunningham notifications@github.com wrote:

I chose 500 after studying the word count on typical pages and applying the heuristic of 10 words per line.

http://wiki.c2.com/?TenWordLine

Much of the content on wiki was authored when computer screens were 640 pixels wide. 500 is a good match once browser and window borders are taken into account. The sample quoted was regretfully written as pre-formatted text rather than as a block quote which would have filled gracefully.

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