On 10 Mar 2004, at 8:48, Judith Kallos wrote:

Assuming by "justifying" you mean having text lining up 
evenly on both margins ... 

> Should one justify all text on every page of every site
> that is created?

No.

> Or is there a time and place for justifying?

Not in the web in my opinion. Why? Screen displays do 
not have high enough resolution to do it right.

> This has come up on several occasions with the most recent
> being that by not justifying you make your site /more/
> difficult to read.

That is not even true in print media. IMO, justifying text 
makes it harder to read, not easier.

> I was also told justifying is a standard design staple
> that should automatically be integrated on all sites
> from the start.  That's the first time I've seen the
> issue of justifying put into that perspective as though
> it is an unwritten rule.

Do it because it's somehow traditional? Sorry, that 
doesn't make any sense to me. It's only traditional in 
the world of print media, which have different design 
constraints than online media. For instance, in PRINT, 
studies have shown that serif typefaces are uniformly 
easier to read. In ONLINE media, studies have shown 
that san serif typefaces are easier to read. Again, this 
is a matter of resolution - print media has much higher 
resolution available to render text characters than 
monitors do.

> One I've never read about in regards to Web sites 
> anyway.  But heck, ya learn something new every day -
> right?  ;-) 

Yup, that's part of what keeps life interesting!

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
 

• Web Designer Courses
• Off the Shelf Training Courses

HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA