Text line width (Re: Screen Resolution)

Personally I design a given page for a given width and stick to it. If they have
more resolution then they get more vertical space in my book, not horizontal.


For example:
http://www.pretzel.com/ (A site I did as part of my job. You'll see text in
the subpages.)
http://www.geocities.com/arcady0/macross/zentradi.html
	(a subpage of a current hobby project, none of the links work yet. Only this
and the index page are up.)

I've heard the limit on characters in a line is between 60 to 80.

To make text look good you really have to ensure line width, font, font size,
and style. I set up a style sheet with all the various elements spec'd out for
an entire site.

To deal with width I always place it in fixed width tables. I use a lot of transparent
gif images (a 1*1 pixel transparent gif that I stretch to needs) to ensure proper
placement and maximum width are forced, since the browsers don't always pay
exact attention to the width you specify in a table or table data cell.



>> This is because when lines of text get too long, it begins to impair our

>>  ability to find the start of the next line.  There is a natural ceiling
at
>>  which you should aim when designing columns of text.  It's a line length
of
>>  about 100 characters, I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong).
>>  
>>  Fixing the width of your text columns can aid your visitors significantly.

>
>But how can you do it?  My problem is that I've designed my site to look good

>at 640x480 and 800x600.  When a friend visited it at 1024x768 he complained

>'cause the text went on and on and the images were too small.  You can see

>the page at http://members.aol.com/reywob/garratts/index.htm
>If I fix the text column width for 640x480 then it'll look odd at other 
>resolutions.  I can't enlarge the images much either, as that would throw out

>the design at 640x480.
>Any ideas?
>
>Regards,
>Peter.
>
>

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