[pmwiki-users] A question about skins

[Clemens Gruber]

Andrew Standfield wrote:

> This actually got me to thinking about the line length issue because  
> it's been quite awhile (almost 10 years (eek)) since I actually  
> learned about the effect of long lines. So I did a bit of digging  
> around, and according to the latest study I could find about on- 
> screen reading, longer lines (of about 95 character per line) are  
> read *faster* (counter to what I had originally been taught). But 95  
> cpl is about the limit. "Efficiency" was found to be optimized at the  
> same length.
>
> Here's the link to the study:
> http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLength.htm
>
> And here's a synopsis of it at the U.S Dept. of Health's usability site:
> http://www.usability.gov/pubs/082006news.html


Hi Andrew, thanks for this links.


> BTW, CSS3 will have columnar text (and text and image orientation).


Yes, hopefully will a lot of browsers support them.


> I'm not sure if it's because of the browsers I'm using (Safari,  
> Firefox, and Camino), but the arrows on SimpleBits only switch the  
> style from wide (900px) fixed-width to narrow (760px) fixed-width. 


You are right, there is set a max-width, so it's only in a (small) range 
flexible. ;-) But you can delete the max-width or set it to a higher 
level. .

http://www.simplebits.com/css/fixed.css

#wrap {
    width: 760px;
    }

http://www.simplebits.com/css/screen.css
http://www.simplebits.com/css/master.css

#wrap {
    max-width: 900px;
    min-width: 580px;


> At  any rate, i'm very much about giving the user a certain amount of  
> control over layout, but more from an accessibility point of view  
> than a "preference" point of view.