[wp-hackers] Re: The fixed with of the admin area

[Anirudh Sanjeev]

> I disagree -- I, and I think many others here, want _exactly_ that. I have
> a
> 19" CRT monitor at 1600x1200 resolution for a reason. If I didn't want it
> that wide, I could easily just resize my browser.

There is a problem with having text go extremely wide.

If you observe gmail, though the mail writing field is large and wide, all
your messages have a fixed width as far as gmail shows it. The reason is
when you're reading along line, you're prone to skip lines or not remember
where you left off.

Suppose line n was very long and the text is itself extremely long, Then at
the end of line n, you might skip to line n+1 or there is a good probability
you might skip to line (n+2). The human mind works that way. Just this that
if the text is very wide, you might have difficulties reading large pieces
of text. Don't take my word for it, try opening up a project gutenburg or a
large text in notepad and maximize it. See how far you'll read before you
start getting annoyed with the width.

I'll try finding a proper usability article either from Jakob Neilsen or
someone.

But the fact is, after a width of around 1000 px, it starts to get a little
difficult to work around with.


-- 
Anirudh Sanjeev
Third Year Undergraduate Student, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
http://anirudhsanjeev.org
Mail: anirudh at anirudhsanjeev.org
Phone: +91-97335-04828
jabber/googletalk: anirudh at anirudhsanjeev.org
If this message is signed with PGP, you can verify with my public key at
http://anirudhsanjeev.org/pubkey.txt