WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: fixed width or resizable pages

for

From: Laura Carlson
Date: Nov 10, 2004 6:58AM

Something to take into consideration is that liquid design and relative
sizing help support device independence. A key to accessibility is to
design for device independence, so that pages work on any device which
supports the openly published standards (not just desktop computer
monitors running GUI browsers). For web content to be device
independent, it should be possible for a user to obtain a functional
presentation associated with its web page identifier via any user
agent. As Darrel mentioned with the growth of PDAs, cell phones, etc.
having accessible content is becoming more and more important.

CSS 2 allows for a max-width setting but at the same time we must
realize that some users think breaking a line at any length shorter
than their browser window width is a waste of space. With paper a
designer has to pick one fixed line length to inflict on everyone. On
the web a designer has greater flexibility. One philosophy is if a
designer is not going to use the web's inherent flexibility, why not
use PDF instead of HTML?

With that said though, in CSS 2 you can specify max-widths in CSS for
blocks of text...that way, the line length won't exceed whatever you
specify...say in percent or ems (to support relative sizing). Example:

#content { max-width: 400em; }

You can also add min-width, max-height, min-height. IE/win doesn't
understand this, but there are JavaScript work arounds to get it to
play nice. For more info visit: Minimum and maximum widths. [1]

As for desktop computer monitors running GUI browsers...in "Optimal
Line Length" [2] Bob Bailey, Ph.D., Chief Scientist for HFI, discusses
the optimal line length when reading prose text from a monitor. He says:

"Users tend to read faster if the line lengths are longer (up to 10
inches). If the line lengths are too short (2.5 inches or less) it may
impede rapid reading. Finally, users tend to prefer lines that are
moderately long (4 to 5 inches)."

With the browser stats that are cited at W3schools, it would be more
relevant to see the widths of the browser windows for users of your own
local site rather than the screen resolution of a global audience. I
have a 1280 x 1024 monitor resolution but my browser window is
typically 800 wide and about 950 tall. I do however feel that designing
for 800 x 600 is not a bad thing but I will usually make my pages with
relative sizing and use up the full width of the browser window. I
think that if someone out there has their browser set to 1280 x 1024,
almost every site they see will have very long lines of text and that
must be what the user is used to and/or prefers. And as Chris and Iain
said a person can always resize the browser window to change line
length.

Let us not forget those users with vision impairments. If we make our
pages fixed at say 800 wide and an individual with a large screen comes
to our page and has the font size bumped way up, they will be stuck
with only a couple of words per line all over to the left of their
screen because we deemed they did not need to use the right half.

For more info visit:

Device Independence
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility#device

Line Length
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability#linelength

Liquid Design
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/usability#liquid

Relative sizing
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/accessibility#relative

My 2 cents,

Laura

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/visudet.html#min-max-widths

___________________________________________
Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN, U.S.A. 55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/goto/webdesign/