Quote:
Originally Posted by acidzebra
Necessary? No. Nice? Yes. Does it make for hefty baggage when traveling? Not at all! I might even want one with a bigger screen for at home (say, A4 sized).
|
The thing is, the bigger the screen, the bigger the font has to be. This is a typographic issue. I learned this from David Siegel and his Web Wonk site, which is unfortunatly no longer on line. However, he talked about the relationship of the width of the line of type in relation to the size of the font. Basically, as you read text if the text is too wide for the font size your eyes fatigue more easily. This is because as your eyes track to back to the beginning of the next line you have to locate the correct line. If the line is to wide for the font there is alot more work your eyes have to do.
This causes fatigue. He talked about making sure to set a max width on your web sites if they contained alot of text based on the font size. He also talked alot about line leading and font leading, etc... he has a background it typography.
So, just having a bigger reader screen doesn't necessisarily mean you will be able to have more words per page. Yes, you will if you use the same font size, however if the line length isn't taken into account your eyes will get tired. Perhaps these bigger screens will need to accomodate this by having columned viewing modes and such. This also is why some people prefer margins on their ebook pages. I don't think it is so much the margin as the reduction in line length makes the text easier to read.
'nuff said. I wish the Web Wonk site was still up. Perhaps it is in the internet archive. Cool... it is, here is the link
http://web.archive.org/web/200604280...egel.com/tips/ .
Here is a quote to the specific section on the above:
Many people in the computer world are used to long lines of text and 1" margins, so they think I'm nuts. They read 10" lines of text all day. In fine typography, we prefer to make it easy on the reader, not a challenge. Long lines of text make it harder to get back to the left margin and pick up the next line. You end up reading the same line over again because of the distance back to the left side of the page.
A good rule of thumb is that the longer the line length, the more leading you should use. Since we can't add leading, we should strive for shorter lines.
As you wander around the web, you have to make your browser window narrower to get 10-12 words on a line. That's what I do when I come to a passage of text I want to read.
Keep in mind that this Web Wonk was written a long time ago... so he talks about using tables and trnasparent gifs to acomplish the typographic look that he wants. Of course today you would use CSS 2.1 based layout rather than those old hacks.
BOb