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Comment by keldaris | Hacker News Reader

Wouldn't normally criticize website design, but since this came up... yes, the fonts are pretty and all, but on my humble 24" monitor the site uses barely half of my horizontal space and looks awkward (the table of contents especially). "Mobile-first"?

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> but on my humble 24" monitor the site uses barely half of my horizontal space and looks awkward (the table of contents especially). "Mobile-first"?

That's actually a feature, as lines that are too long are harder to read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_length). It's the same as why books actually have empty margins.

To me, the font is too thin to be easy to read.

I don't mind empty margins, but having 60% of my screen empty for no reason is excessive, and I do read slower because of it. If I want shorter lines, I'll just resize my browser, thanks.

I agree with you about the font being too thin, but the line length annoyed me much more.

My problem is that the notes are off-screen - their seems to be an assumption that I'm reading on a widescreen monitor...

Yes, sorry for that. I need to work a bit more on a more responsive CSS.

Optimizing for super-rare users who have a deliberate desire for long lines is less important than optimizing for the vastly-more-common case that the browser's size is large as an artifact of content the user was viewing on a previous site, but the user still prefer a sane line length for text content.

Citation that these users are super rare? Almost everyone I've had conversations with on the subject bemoan too large margins on websites.

That's odd. I wonder if these people that like looong lines are mostly younger people that have read more from screens than books (but not so young that they've read more from phones than computer screens :))? A book with very long lines would be super weird.

Agreed. I'm specifically referencing wasted space. As I've gotten older, that "wasted" space gets replaced with zoomed fonts using ctrl+=. I've found this attitude and use isn't all that unique anecdotally, so I found the assertion that it's "rare" to be contrary to my own experience. I have no citation the other way though!

On the flip side you can use Reader Mode to make long lines shorter, but you can't use Anti-Reader Mode to make short lines longer.

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