This is the first blog in a series about desktop improvements coming to Wikipedia. Wikipedia has remained a critical and widely-used resource for knowledge across the world for the past two decades…
Our second change introduces a maximum line width to our content on pages where reading is the focus, such as article pages and discussion pages. Research has shown that limiting the width can lead to better retention of the content itself, as well as a decrease in eye strain.
I’ve gotta be honest… I can’t believe that this isn’t already a thing on most web pages. This knowledge is there since… and I’m not exaggerating… multiple hundred years. My SO back then studied communication sciences, and typography was a part of this. So there are people who know this and learned this within their field, but none of them seem to work for the design of internet pages.
I’m always using the webbrowser in non-miximized size. I’m using a comparatively slim window size for this very reason. It’s awful to read so long lines.
That is one of the reasons, but newspaper columns are particularly thin, and the reason for that might be that they can better embed ads in between those thin columns.
I’ve gotta be honest… I can’t believe that this isn’t already a thing on most web pages. This knowledge is there since… and I’m not exaggerating… multiple hundred years. My SO back then studied communication sciences, and typography was a part of this. So there are people who know this and learned this within their field, but none of them seem to work for the design of internet pages.
I’m always using the webbrowser in non-miximized size. I’m using a comparatively slim window size for this very reason. It’s awful to read so long lines.
Is this why newspapers had thin columns?
That is one of the reasons, but newspaper columns are particularly thin, and the reason for that might be that they can better embed ads in between those thin columns.