RFC: Home page design

[Russel Winder]

On Tue, 2009-09-15 at 09:58 +0200, Denys Duchier wrote:
> Martin Pool <mbp at canonical.com> writes:
> 
> > I don't think it should be fixed in pixels.  But the point is, do you
> > really want 50-word lines going across such a wide screen?  It's not
> > very readable.
> 
> This why I believe you should let the USER decide what is the proper
> width his windows should have for comfortable browsing.  Furthermore,
> since the design has several columns, lines are unlikely to be too long
> anyway.

This is a very important point.

There is a great deal of work on the psychological aspects (including
typographical issues) of reading.  Most of it relates to paper medium,
but there is an increasing literature about reading on screen.  A lot of
the "metrics" bandied about relate to paper medium even when being
applied to screen medium, yet reading on screen is very different from
paper medium.  Users are in control of "paper" sizes and font sizes in a
way not possible with paper, and indeed change things on the fly.
Moreover the actual screens people have a wide variety of resolutions
and mappings of font sizes.  If the document is PDF then there are
constraints.  For HTML there are far fewer.  OK we all know all of this,
so lets make sure that the page design sits well with all the (lack of)
constraints.

There is also the issue of how well the pages work for blind or
partially sighted people, can a screen reader render the screen
sensibly.  Does the screen work with unusually large or small fonts.
Fixed width columns for websites usually end up being a serious disaster
for some group of people.

Sorry for the rant -- I just realized it has turned out as a bit of one.

-- 
Russel.
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Dr Russel Winder      Partner
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