Re: Summary So far

SeaPlusPlus <SeaPlusPlus (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

No they MUST be nothing of the sort. Indicating visited links is
just a gimmick and on a well constructed site are totally
unneccesary.

Martin Bialasinski wrote:

If I have a list of 20 article headlines, linked to the respective
articles, I consider it a very useful feature to be able to recognise
at a glimse the articles I have take a look at already.

Okay, you are right, in this case it is helpful... but still not
neccesary. ;-)

If you have a convoluted web site that makes it a web and no
hierarchy[...]

Blaming to web to be web-like is, let's say, interesting.

Heh heh, nope I wasn't saying the web was 'web like' I was saying when
a web site design be 'web like' (cross-linked all over the place) that
you need to reconsider...

Martin Bialasinski wrote:

If I have a list of 20 article headlines, linked to the respective
articles, I consider it a very useful feature to be able to recognise
at a glimse the articles I have take a look at already.

SeaPlusPlus wrote:

Okay, you are right, in this case it is helpful... but still not
neccesary. ;-)

kchayka wrote:

Yes it is necessary, if you have any regard for your visitors. Of
course, if the site is for your own personal use feel free to do
whatever you like.

Calm down... I put a wink in there... after all, I know it can be a good
thing... but to tell you the truth... on my web site I didn't indicate
visited sites differently from non-visited. Because of the design of the
site and what it repesents the visited site indication is superfluous.

But of course... depending on your design, YMMV...

Thank you...

Rich

kchayka wrote:

Reading a book and reading on screen are two totally different things.

SeaPlusPlus wrote:

True enough, but it shouldn't be... should it???

kchayka wrote:

Why does it have to be the same? It's different media.

Because reading on a display, for the most part, sucks... it could be a
lot better but a lot of people think it's just fine the way it is. But
they are settling for far less than they could get.

If you have a good desplay

Does everyone need to upgrade their hardware to live in your world?

Nope but what I am saying is everyone should have the best experience
with the hardware they have in front of them at the time.

and you enable clear type

I don't even have this thing, so it will be hard to enable it.

That's a shame, because it is very good... even if Microsoft didn't
invent it... ;-)

True, you do need a color LCD display to even meet the hardware requirement.

and have paid
attention to all the nuances of what takes place when reading a book,
you should be able to duplicate the 'book' experience during the
'display' experience.

In my world, the viewing environments for reading a book and reading on
screen have few similarities. For example, I sit a fair distance from
the monitor, but I need to have a book pretty close to read that small
print. I don't want or need the two environments to be the same.

Mox nix... if your display is presenting the copy to the best of its
ability you win. It will look as good as it can and will 'read' as good
as it can. I didn't say the environment will be the same. I said the
experience will be the same. I'm not sure what you are driving at....

Are you saying, you like having the computer screen suck because that's
the way it has always been, and that's the way it always will be?

On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:09:31 +0000,
SeaPlusPlus <SeaPlusPlus (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> posted:

The correct print font would be Times New Roman this is the font
optimazed over many many years for print media. My body print CSS is...
(font: 10.5pt normal "Times New Roman", serif

In general I'd go along with that. However, not all distributions of the
Times font are the same as each other, and sometimes that is a bit small.

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Tim wrote:

I spent quite some time fiddling with the supplied fonts trying to find one
that was easy to read on my web browser (that was my main criteria, even
more so than looking brilliant). I settled on Georgia, for Windows.

SeaPlusPlus wrote:

Georgia is an excellent choice for the screen it is highly readable.

Lauri Raittila <lauri (AT) raittila (DOT) cjb.net> posted:

Have you measured it? I find it harder to read than similar size TNR.

To each their own... In my case, the default MSIE browser sizes for either
of them threw the favour in Georgia's direction, and I can play with more
specific sizes for other browsers defaults to suit what I want.

What were web browser authors thinking of when they squashed
the lines closer together than normal? Apart from being harder to read, as
soon as you use characters with accents, etc., they either overlap the line
above, or shove those lines of text further apart than the rest of the
document.

You usually see that when you override font size, and site has specified
1 for line-height...

Yes, that's an annoying common occurence that meant I really needed a
user-style sheet to read some pages. Using a browser's function to merely
ignore font sizes doesn't help when there's a fixed line height set.

However, if you compare a browser to other mediums, you'll notice that
they've usually condensed the line height more than normal. It doesn't
help with reading, and I can only guess that it was an attempt to squeeze
more text into the canvas, where they'd have been better off not cramping
the canvas with all the surrounding GUI. Reading through a keyhole is a
prolific problem with computer GUIs.

But, in summary, ease of reading depends on a combination of factors:

Font design (it's style, if you like)
Font aspect ratio
Font size
Font weight
Inter-character spacing

(Kerning)

There's two aspects to that: The general spacing between each character,
and the special spacing between certain characters. It's not something
that's done well on many computer reading environments, and it also
requires well designed fonts.

Inter-line spacing
Colours

Width of column (this is closely related to line-height)
Good sized paragraphs

Oh yes, the two screen-length paragraph... Argh!

On well designed pages I can adjust the column width with the browser
window width. I do that quite a lot, and it's a very easy thing for me to
do when the site is designed well. Unfortunately a lot are not.

Emulate the look and feel of a book and you'll not be far from the 'ideal'.

Exept, that in WWW, you can overcome biggest problem of book - the
unability to have different properties people that need them. And other
users get tested default. And you don't have to do anything.

There's certain aspects of emulating a book that are good, such as:

* Writing properly in the first place
* Making it *possible* to read in a linear fashion (on the page,
and across pages).
* Making as intuitive to read as simply looking and changing pages.

But as you say, there's a fair number of points against it, like:

* Attempts at rigid layout control are bad.
* Separating some content across multiple pages when a single page
would have been better.
* Not adequately interlinking so that you don't have to read it in
a linear fashion.

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SeaPlusPlus posted:

The correct print font would be Times New Roman this is the font
optimazed over many many years for print media. My body print CSS is...
(font: 10.5pt normal "Times New Roman", serif

Tim wrote:

In general I'd go along with that. However, not all distributions of the
Times font are the same as each other, and sometimes that is a bit small.

This is for the printer CSS and it is specified as 10.5pt to match up
with the printing worlds 'small pica'. If the software (or hardware) at
the printer does something else, I can't be held responsible. ;-)

10.5pt is 10.5pt ain't it??? ;-)

After all... my suggestions are just that... only suggestions.

Thank you...

Rich

SeaPlusPlus wrote:

Georgia is an excedllent choice for the screen it is highly readable.

Lauri Raittila wrote:

Have you measured it? I find it harder to read than similar size TNR.

The correct print font would be Times New Roman this is the font
optimazed over many many years for print media. My body print CSS is...
(font: 10.5pt normal "Times New Roman", serif

I would use 11pt, or maybe even bigger, depending on content, and bigger
line height. 1.2 is quite little with typical A4 print width.

My width is 160% that should keep them happy... ;-)

The sizes I've chosen for the printer CSS is...

h1
{
font: 24.4pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* 2-line pica */
}

h2
{
font: 19pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* paragon */
}

h3
{
font: 15pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* 2-line brevier */
}

h4
{
font: 12.2pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* pica */
}

h5
{
font: 10.5pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* small pica */
}

h6
{
font: 7.6pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* brevier */
}

This is to match up with the printing world. Body is the same as h5

Emulate the look and feel of a book and you'll not be far from the 'ideal'.

Exept, that in WWW, you can overcome biggest problem of book - the
unability to have different properties people that need them. And other
users get tested default. And you don't have to do anything.

Yep, makes it worth the effort to emulate a book.

Thank you...

Rich

"SeaPlusPlus" wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:

10.5pt is 10.5pt ain't it??? ;-)

In the world of CSS on screens, it ain't.

--

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/

"SeaPlusPlus" wrote:

10.5pt is 10.5pt ain't it??? ;-)

Stan Brown wrote:

In the world of CSS on screens, it ain't.

Someone else who insists on quoting me out of context... This is my
PRINTER CSS stylesheet... I realize that may be a difficult concept for
some people... AAAARRRGGGGHHHHH ! ! ! !

(I'm okay now...) ;-)

Thank you...

Rich

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:03:32 +0000,
SeaPlusPlus <SeaPlusPlus (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> posted:

h5
{
font: 10.5pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* small pica */
}

h6
{
font: 7.6pt "Times New Roman", serif;
/* brevier */
}

This is to match up with the printing world. Body is the same as h5

And since when has it ever been a good idea to make a heading smaller than
the following body text? I've never seen any professionally printed
material that worked that way.

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