Re: critique please - Question

Hey Carol.. Good Morning..

I upped my page design size to 760 pixels around a year ago to accommodate
800x600 res. I decided, maybe wrongly, that I should take off the arbitrary
40 pixel overhead the same as we did using 600 pixels for 640x480 in the
past. A few times this resulted in a small horizontal scroll, easily
removed, but not often.

The problem with the 760 pixel forced width, IMO, might be that this size
requires the eyes to scan too much when reading text unless one uses
additional columns of text and/or graphic elements to shorten the length of
text. Some member here a few years ago was somewhat of a typographical
expert and pointed out some websites and books dealing with this issue.. and
if I remember correctly around 3" to 4" was the maximum width of text that
was comfortable to the eyes, and somewhere around 2"-3" was optimum. Again,
this is from memory.

Given this, and given a 700-760 pixel width to pages, one needs to take a
look at pages at say 800x600 res and possibly make sure that columns of text
fit into the comfort zone. When we worked designing in a 600 pixel width, it
was less important because 90%-95% of the people surfed at 640x480 or
800x600 and most any columns of text was in the comfort zone.

As usual, it's just designing, using graphic elements, text elements and
white space to offer information that is both easy to  read and pleasing to
the eye. At least, that's my humble opinion.

- Craig
(all outbound email scanned by Norton 2002)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carol Parent" <cbwd(at)means.net>
> Good morning,
>
> Just wanting to know what 'size' ppl have started to design for as a
> standard.  Remember a few years back you either went with 100% OR 640
> pixels?  I have upped my page size to 700 as the 'norm' but am wondering
if
> any of you have started going wider as your design standard?
>
> Best regards,
>
> Carol Parent

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