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line length and myth of the fold

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From: Christophe Strobbe
Date: Apr 18, 2008 6:40AM

Hi Karl,

At 13:51 18/04/2008, Karl Groves wrote:
> > I think something like the Jello Mold approach
> > (...) is better - the page width (...)
> > has both minimum and maximum widths to accommodate
> > readability (not so narrow that things break and not so wide that it's
> > difficult to read long lines of text).
> >
>
>Not to totally derail this thread, but I'd like to point out that the belief
>that long lines of text is bad is rather unfounded. I've read a number of
>usability studies which have come to the conclusion that reading performance
>(speed and accuracy) does not differ significantly between line lengths[1].
>Some studies indicate there is a preference difference but I'm not convinced
>that's significant enough evidence to avoid long lines of text because by
>shortening lines of text you also run into issues with content being pushed
>below the fold. In my experience observing users in the lab, having
>important content placed below the fold is far more likely to cause
>information to go unnoticed by users.

I'd be very interested in the other studies you know, since line
length is now in WCAG 2.0 (SC 1.4.8:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20-20071211/complete.html#visual-audio-contrast-visual-presentation>;).

With regard to content above or below the fold, I thought that there
was research debunking this myth. See for example the article at
<http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of>;.

Best regards,

Christophe


>1 - http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/textmargin.html is just one of maybe 8
>studies I know of.
>
>Karl Groves


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Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Dept. of Electrical Engineering - SCD
Research Group on Document Architectures
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