I don't like the extra padding that every designer is adding into every web site and application. I need to keep multiple sites/apps on my screen as I need to look at references, work on my tasks, and communicate with others. but every designer thinks I should maximize their site/app. It's forcing me to resize and move windows all the time.
The article addresses this by mentioning that they referenced research demonstrating text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information.
The page gets much less padded when you reduce the size of the window, because the padding isn't there to make blank space, it's there to enforce a maximum line width.
> text that is too wide causes people to read less comfortably and retain less information.
This seems like an excuse to force JS to enable ads & what should be the default that is toggled with the fullscreen button in the bottom right. It does not justify wasted width as the user can more easily set the text to the appropriate zoom than applying some custom CSS:
Zooming in now decreases the padding on the right, but has an offsetting increase in the wasted padding on the left contents until it completely disappears with huge text.
You're seriously expecting Wikipedia users to set up custom css to apply their reading preferences, just so that you personally don't have to deal with a different amount of padding?
Do you realize the level of entitlement and absurdity here?
One of the two options has to be chosen for the no JS, no query param / no login default - there is no entitlement and absurdity in that expectation. Using the max-width: none or similar as the default option has the benefit of allowing the user's browser keep the ability to monotonely scale the text density along with size using zoom as the displayed area would be nearly constant. It's rather arrogant & condescending to choose for a user a width that overrides what control they have with their window's dimensions, screen size, viewing distance & vision capability.
I don't understand the nature of your suggested link between ideas about maximum comfortable text column width are related to forcing JS. The size of the text column is generally set with CSS and not JS, no?
Ideally, CSS and not JS would be used to set the size of column text. But, that is not what Wikipedia is doing by default. Observe the behavior of the table on this page with & without JS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_relation that occurs on not just that page, but all of the Binary relation pages. Note the dangling "in" at the top without JS with limited CSS styles on the table, but with JS the table becomes collapsed by default & the page text does not jump. The other JS only functionality that extends the page width that does not cause the page text to jump when the table is opened is the previously mentioned fullscreen "Toggle limited content width" button in the bottom right. Also, since I cannot edit the original comment here is the previous CSS condensed:
For whatever reason, especially with a bigger screen, I find that wider text becomes uncomfortable and somewhat exhausting to read. I'm not sure what the right portions/ratio are, but with a 27in screen it's definitely noticeable.
This has been studied a lot in design. Most people prefer line lengths in the 50-60 character region. Some studies show lengths up to 75 to be appropriate, but that’s about the limit. Past that people have a hard time keeping track of where they are and find reading to take more effort.
That's way too short for me. Somewhere between 120 to 150 seems a good minimum, 200 or maybe up to 250 are much better maximums, maybe even a bit higher. I lose my place easily when I have to change lines so damn much.
Even when I only have one maximized window up I hate all the empty white space. I've taken to just zooming in until the text fills the window. The new design handles the zoom so much better than the old one.
