Release notes- Great job

[Rodd Clarkson]

On Sat, 2005-10-08 at 23:13 -0600, Michal Jaegermann wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 09:37:29AM +1000, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> > A good example of this 80
> > character requirement can be seen in the source code for the page, where
> > the lines are wrapped around 80 characters since it makes it easier to
> > read the source code.  (There's a reason why old CRTs and terminals
> > where about 70-80 characters wide too)
> 
> Terminals are 80 characters wide most likely because Herman
> Hollerith (1860-1929) was using punched cards with 80 columns and
> IBM "recycled" these from tabulating machines when they started to
> make computers.  I would be not surprised to learn that Hollerith
> got that size from Jacquard loom or something similar. :-)
> 
> In typography 80 character line is normally considered waaay too
> wide. 75 is an upper limit with 66, in a single column, as something
> to aim for. Still I agree that changes you are proposing would make
> that text more readable.

I agree with you, but after doing a bunch of websites (it's my job)
sadly clients want to see most of the page used, and convincing them to
go narrower is a losing battle.  70 or 80 is livable (it's better), and
it's wide enough without using a big font to use most of a 800px wide
browser.

What we could do to improve this would be to use some simple javascript,
along with a little CSS and create a floating menu that sits beside the
main text.  Of course this wouldn't work in text based browsers, and it
wouldn't work in IE (doesn't support position:fixed) but if all it has
to do is work inside Mozilla based browsers then we should be fine.  (I
acknowledge that you can do this in other browsers, but it's easy to do
with CSS and JavaScript in gecko, and more complicated the more browsers
you support.


Rodd.
-- 
"It's a fine line between denial and faith.
 It's much better on my side"