you can also just display text with multicolumn.

solves the paragraph width "usability" and uses the full screen space

not sure why its never used.. I also really dislike the current trend of giant white sidebars

Because it would make scrolling more frequent? For multicolumn text to reduce scrolling, the column height would have to match the available viewport height. And if your text exceeds what can fit in multiple columns on a single screenful, scrolling also becomes awkward, because you'd have to scroll exactly to the next screenful to have any consistency. Multiple text columns only make sense on extremely restricted layouts, or where the volume are entirely independent instead of a single flowing piece of text, or where there is still a direct horizontal relationship (like annotations or translations beside the main text).

> And if your text exceeds what can fit in multiple columns on a single screenful, scrolling also becomes awkward, because you'd have to scroll exactly to the next screenful to have any consistency.

That used to be a solved problem, before every website started to include multiple oversized "dickbars" floating over the real content and taking up 15+% of the available vertical space. Pressing the "Page Down" button on a keyboard would scroll down by exactly one screenfull. We also used to have scrollbars that on most operating systems would let you scroll down by exactly one screenfull with a single click.

>you'd have to scroll exactly to the next screenful to have any consistency.

Or to the right. (That might be even worse though, I don't know.)

Interesting idea. Maybe we could have a standard action of moving one column further.

oh good question

i have never hit this issue bc you need a massive amount of text to fill the whole screen. I have some natural breaks and subheaders. Each section is wrapped in its own columns

It's a little annoying to change from 3 to 2 to 1 columns when someone does resize, though. I just let people resize the window itself on my blog if they want to compress the text down.

I want this and am eventually going to try harder to implement it, but the reason is basically because CSS can’t do it. What do you do when you still have more content than fits on the screen? If you just stick with default CSS behavior and make the columns taller than the screen, now you’re scrolling all over the place constantly, it sucks. If you add more columns off to the right, you already probably need to use JS for layout, and it still isn’t nice on desktop, you need to scroll more for each bit of content and most desktops don’t have intuitive side scrolling controls. What you want is viewport-sized “pages” with a dynamic number of columns per page, but this is basically a whole extra layout mode that you need to implement in JS. There was a whole project to let JS plug into the layout engine better, I think it’s stalled now, I don’t know if it got far enough. Then there’s the weird bottom right -> scroll -> top left jump, you probably want to implement a hint or UI there, maybe even column to column since we’re breaking norms here. Scroll snapping is thankfully in CSS now, so we don’t have to worry about scrolling precisely to the next screenful, but we do cost people the ability to put what they want where they want it within the viewport. You’ll need to implement something to make anchor links work again, users can no longer just look at the top of the page. Everything’s going to go nuts when users resize the window, and maybe even more nuts due to browser attempts to keep them “in the same place”, you need to make it some semblance of ok. As soon as you want something non-text your columns will be too narrow, so you’re really going to have to implement complex column-spanning stuff off the bat. CSS thankfully has tools for controlling things like “don’t split this across columns”, but I bet they’ll prove inadequate if you dig into it. You’ve also reduced linearity, it’s now much less true that what’s above is before and what’s before is above, etc.

I’m still interested in this layout, but that’s why nobody does it: it’s far more complex from the web dev’s perspective, bad if not executed perfectly, and still has downsides even if perfect.

I think it’s still popular in places where the viewport size and content are both known at design time.

I find shift + scroll quite intuitive. Works on almost everything where there is a horizontal scrollbar.

I remember somebody championing css features, I think Adobe, to make it possible to have overflowing content spill over into another container, like it is (was?) possible to do in Publisher. I'd love something like that, and have wanted it several times. But it was abandoned...

Never knew that. I think that in combination with CSS grid auto fill, that may have solved a huge chunk of paged columns.

No offence, but "please don't do X" where X is favoured by the big majority of users AND has a broad scientific base sounds a bit... entitled?

It has nothing to do with entitlement. If you choose an arbitrary width based on usability studies, you may make a large percentage of users happy, but if you let users set the width by resizing their browser, you make 100% of users happy. Why not choose the latter?

You won't make 100% of the users happy. In fact if argue you would make the majority of the users unhappy. I don't want to have to realize my browser for every web site. Is rather have a website that is fairly easy to read without me doing anything. I think most people would want that.

My windows stay maximized and I’m not about to faff about, resizing them. When I come across an Ultra Panavision website I usually just open the dev tools with a single F-key to squish it.

If the user needs to set their own width by resizing the window they can also set the width by right-clicking -> inspect element -> disabling the CSS style on the div that gives it a max width. Which is only a couple more clicks than resizing the window and affects a lot less people.

Often not so easy to do with nowadays bloated designs and tons of patronizing frontend devs making websites. You might have to remove 10 styles for all the bloat containers they used to contain fancy text. Better to not prescribe any preference and enable the user via standard browser tooling, which definitely would spring up, if users showed significant interest in such.

Resizing browser is cumbersome and will definitely NOT make me happy. Especially since I have tiled desktop but even without it.

If you really want to please everybody here, introduce an option that is remembered in a cookie (reading preference, trivial to implement). There is no one size fit all here.

I’m not going to resize my browser each time I follow a link or switch between tabs.

> but if you let users set the width by resizing their browser, you make 100% of users happy

It's very ignorant to believe 100% of users are happy with having to resize their browsers just to get a pleasant rendering of the site.

Nonsense. People almost always use browsers maximized. And many people have 2.5k or 4k screens. Even on 1080p screens full width text is unreadable.

I seriously doubt there are any people who resize their browser window every time they switch tabs.

Right, there is a reason newspapers long ago realized multiple columns is better than full-width text. Imagine reading New York Times if it had only one full-width column. People would stop subscribing to it.

it what's also nonsense is, to firmly associate browser window width with tab content width. The user can control these independently. Maybe it should be made easier to do so, or more comfortable. At some point though we should take a step back and ask ourselves how we can solve the problem without dumbing down the interface so much, that capable users suffer.

I must not be a people -- I don't have my browser maximized. I like to be able to see the browser window, Emacs, and a terminal all at once.

I actually prefer limited content width for prose content. Full width content on wide screens requires moving eyes all the way from one side to another for every line.

The real problem is that the browser won't let you control the width of a tab without resizing the browser window, which is a bit fiddly, exposes stuff behind the window, and makes you resize the window again and again when moving between tabs.

If you could easily shrink a tab, I would prefer websites to not limit text width. Since you can't, I sorta prefer them to do it, though it's much worse than the user controlling it in a nice per tab way

(1) reader mode (made for that purpose)

(2) user stylesheets (permanent solution, but you could have multiple and use an extension to enable disable different widths)

(3) responsive mode (in dev tools, most flexible, but most cumbersome to reach)

(4) Other extensions

There are easy ways to resize the viewport, so the premise is false.

you can "pop out" a single tab to a new window.

You could use the browser's dev tools to emulate a narrower viewport.

It should also be almost trivial to create a browser extension for this, if it doesn't even exist yet.

I use the developer tools right panel for that.

I use firefox's sidebar (vertical tabs) which makes resizing quite natural imo

Right, if you have wide columns then you have to move eyes BOTH from left to right AND when you reach the end of the line you have to move them back to left AND down to next line. Whereas if the line is narrow enough to read without moving eyes horizontally you only need to move your eyes down after each line.

Right, there is a reason why print magazines use columns even for long multi-page articles. With long lines, readers tend to get lost when navigating from the end of one line to the start of the next line, and the reading experience suffers. You can help this somehow by increasing spacing between the lines, but the general recommendation is to have 45-75 characters per line.

This bookmarklet to shrink the width has been in my toolbox for a long time: javascript:(function(){%20var%20myBody%20=%20document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];%20var%20myBodyWidth%20=%20myBody.style.width;%20if%20(!myBodyWidth%20||%20myBodyWidth%20===%20'auto'%20||%20myBodyWidth%20===%20'inherit')%20{%20myBody.style.width%20=%20'1200px';%20myBody.style.marginLeft%20=%20'auto';%20myBody.style.marginRight%20=%20'auto';%20myBody.style.position%20=%20'relative';%20myBody.style.cssFloat%20=%20'none';%20}%20else%20{%20myBody.style.width%20=%20'auto';%20myBody.style.position%20=%20'static';%20}%20})();

This summarizes the web ghetto pretty neatly.

Thanks that's an interesting trick.

This is beautified if somebody wants to see how it is done.

  function() {
    var myBody = document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];
    var myBodyWidth = myBody.style.width;
    if (!myBodyWidth || myBodyWidth === 'auto' || myBodyWidth === 'inherit') {
        myBody.style.width = '1200px';
        myBody.style.marginLeft = 'auto';
        myBody.style.marginRight = 'auto';
        myBody.style.position = 'relative';
        myBody.style.cssFloat = 'none';
    } else {
        myBody.style.width = 'auto';
        myBody.style.position = 'static';
    }
  }

If a text-heavy website does not constrain the width of its content, what do you tend to resize the browser to? Does it depend on text size? Or other factors?

I tend to not resize the browser ever, except when developing/testing sites to make sure they render properly on different screens sizes. I use a 27" monitor and I like reading full-width. As I said in my original comment, I find the act of syncing my eyes with scrolling text to be very distracting, whereas reading a very wide column of text to be very easy. Depending on the website's default font face and size I might use the browser's text zoom feature to enlarge the font, but I still like reading full-width.

Interesting. I would say you’re definitely the minority here, and I would still argue that limiting content width does work better for most.

When you say you sometimes enlarge the font, how many words per line do you aim for or end up with, roughly? You’re describing behaviour that aims to render text more readable, so obviously it isn’t simply a case of “I like text content to be as wide as possible”.

I have no doubt I'm in the minority. My preference is basically the more words on a line the better, to reduce as much as possible a) my eyes jumping to the beginning of the next line, and b) having to scroll the page and have my eyes sync to the scrolling. The only reason I enlarge the font is to make it large enough to read comfortably. I don't make it too big, though, because then the lines start to become shorter, and I'm back to the original problem: having to keep jumping to the next line, and scrolling fairly often (which is my biggest complaint because I find that even more distracting than moving my eyes to the next line).

No. No no no. I browse hundreds even thousands of pages every singe days, and I either just close such sites or go the extra mile to write custom css for them when they are disgustingly wide.

While we're on the subject of "the user needs to become the programmer to have an acceptable experience" (sites needing my custom css added to be usable), my pet peeve is when the scrollbar is present but intentionally offset from the right edge of the screen by one pixel.

So then you hug the right edge of the screen, looking for it, where it looks like it is, and where it's been for like the entire history of computing, and then you click, and there's just nothing there.

This is a special case of Fitts's law, where a button at the edge of a screen becomes effectively infinitely wide, as far as ease-of-clicking goes.

This was used intentionally with great effect on usability in the 90s and 2000s. (Scrollbar, start menu, show desktop, etc.)

In the last decade however the trend appears to have reversed: it is now fashionable be to make the scrollbar as difficult to click as possible, by offsetting it, making it narrower, or hiding it altogether.

There is a browser out there which does something like that for every site. It has a separate area for the tabs, instead of using the full window. That could be okay. But it has a margin around it. Which means that every single scrollbar for every single page does not go to the edge of the screen, completely sabotaging easily hitting the scrollbar. Welcome to the genius of the zen browser.

https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/1126 is the issue, closed as they won't fix it (thus my snark).

> In the last decade however the trend appears to have reversed: it is now fashionable be to make the scrollbar as difficult to click as possible, by offsetting it, making it narrower, or hiding it altogether.

Afaik Ubuntu jumpstarted it with their minified GTK scrollbar, used in their Unity DE. But that thing was actually smart: It slimmed down visually, but as soon as the mouse entered its region you got the scrollbar handle at the mouse pointer's position. So it made manipulating the scrollbar even easier than a fullsized scrollbar (for at least some usage) while looking nicer. Ofc that usability aspect is something the CSS reskins and other adaptations promptly and completely forgot.

> I, the user, can already control the content width by resizing my browser, thank you very much.

Nearly every techie and non-techie I know has a bazillion tabs open 100% of the time. The likelihood that even the top 10 are all single-column text is 0%. And I'd sooner read web pages hot off a dot matrix printer than constantly pecking at the edge of an un-maximized window, resizing it like some kind of meth-addled chicken.

Note: I may be overstating slightly for effect.

The art of opening windows instead of tabs appears to have been lost to time.

Oh the irony that lots complain that mainstream OSes window managers are oh so poor when all people seem to be able to do is fullscreen everything and then tab around.

Meanwhile, macOS gave up on the absolutely brilliant if misunderstood Mac OS X green + a.k.a "zoom" which would miraculously resize windows to the maximum size of its content but no more.

It's almost like window management is primarily being used for facilitating inter-app interactions, rather than intra-app interactions... almost like tabs were invented for a reason...

Did people lose the old art, or have you never managed to grasp the "new" one?

It wouldn't be a problem in the first place if we hadn't migrated away from 4:3 aspect monitors to these ridiculous widescreen things. ;)

Maybe someone should invent a tiling tab manager for the web browser.

Firefox had an addon for that before Quantum killed so many addons.

https://betanews.com/2014/07/12/view-all-your-firefox-tabs-a...

> macOS gave up on the absolutely brilliant if misunderstood Mac OS X green + a.k.a "zoom"

It’s still there. Window > Zoom from the menu bar, or ⌥ + click the green window button.

I really wish mobile browsers had windows (true windows that could be switched easily, not the weird crap where you go into a submenu to find the list of windows and try to figure out which one has your tab, and Firefox doesn't even have that). I would love to split up my browsing into multiple workspaces on my large tablet, but instead I get to have four browsers installed.

I think a big reason it's lost to time is because it was poorly-specified and therefore a non-portable art.

E.g., there's no way for you to easily send me the desktop state of the open window sizes and dimensions you have in mind. And even then, I'd have to hack the window decorations and fonts myself. I'm back to meth-addled chicken pecking!

This being the top comment really shows you cannot take HN advice seriously.

It feels so much against the spirit of the site as well. "Ignore the actual research in favour of my N=1 preference, and don't worry your users will jump through various non-obvious UX hoops to get the same behaviour that could have been default."

Actually, you are doing the exact thing you criticize. You are suggesting to prescribe your personal preference to users, while they argued for not doing so and letting the user choose, while leaving it unspecified, how the user is supposed to make that choice of viewport/content width.

I much more sympathize with them tbh. Let browser makers figure out how to give the easy to use controls to users. Let them add some override for the number of columns and columns max width and gap and so on. Or let extensions handle that. Whatever. But don't rely on each site prescribing how I have to read it.

> Actually, you are doing the exact thing you criticize.

You do realize that was their only comment on this thread so far, right? The rest is just your headcanon.

What am I doing exactly? I'm saying to take UX studies more seriously than anecdotal preference, and to recognise that very few people are going to manually resize their viewport to navigate your website.

If your website requires a browser extension to be nicely readable you are doing it wrong

I felt it was pretty fitting for HN to find a comment like this at the top. I'll have to admit it's also fitting to find one like yours below it. That it's the most discussed argument is the cherry on top. The comment section feels like a carousel for nearly a decade now.

Resizing your browser resizes your browser. The rest of the page content, the tab you're on (in every major browser), and the window holding those tabs, all resize with it. This is so misguided, I can't help but consider it to be just a thin veiled plea at making sites more frustrating for everyone in support of your supposed preference.

I'd know, because this is exactly how I temporarily "fix" rubbish, outdated sites that have all their 80 column text appear on the left: I resize my browser window to move the text in to the center of my display. It's immensely annoying. It's annoying enough that sometimes it compels me to spend the (short but anger filled) time and override the site's stylesheet rather. At which point, may as well have served me some plain text instead. Speaking of, I do sometimes just toggle reader mode on too.

If you personally don't like how wide a text is, you can of course apply your own preference in various ways: (1) responsive mode, (2) user stylesheets, (3) reader mode. Maybe there are others as well. But don't try to force your preference onto everyone please.

> you can of course apply your own preference in various ways

See above...

> But don't try to force your preference onto everyone please.

Limiting column width is already the predominantly established pattern, even all the way back to print, so this is nonsensical. Unless I interpret it as the cheap, childish clapback that it is. Which I have to say, really befits the take.

So anything that is not like the way things are now, is automatically nonsensical? That seems a very ... progressive mindset. And everything anyone else says, that goes against current trend is ... childish clapback? Wow. You sir are truly an enlightened being. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today.

> So anything that is not like the way things are now, is automatically nonsensical?

No. Claiming that I'm trying to force something to happen that is already the given way is what's nonsensical. Because you see, it has already happened. I can at most reinforce it, contributing to it remaining established, which is really not the model you've been playing along in.

> That seems a very ... progressive mindset.

I'd go as far as to say it's downright tautological!

> And everything anyone else says, that goes against current trend is ... childish clapback?

No. Riding off what I said to coyly make your point instead of just directly sharing them, in order to get a rise out of the other, is what constitutes the childish clapback there. You know, like what you're doing again.

> Wow. You sir are truly an enlightened being.

Unfortunately, I fall way short of that. If I was truly enlightened, I wouldn't give conversations like this the time of day, as they're intentionally crafted to be asinine, to waste people's time and care. Or is that not your whole idea?

Because I have to say, could have fooled me! Repeating after me that I have the amazing options of simulating a different device, injecting my own styling, or using reader mode, blatantly ignoring that these are workarounds and right after I did explicitly list 2/3rds of them off, surely you can appreciate comes across as more than just a little insulting and disingenuous. So does reflecting back the subjectivity of the topic, while conveniently ignoring that e.g. stylesheet injection or browser extension use go both ways, and they could use those too. So is everything just fine as is then, or is there a change needed? Make up your mind, please?

> Thanks for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Cheers! I would say any time, but hopefully for not much longer.

I mean it’s in your comment. The usability studies mean more people prefer it the other way. You SHOULD cater your default style to something that’s more widely usable.

And no, I absolutely do NOT want the content I’m reading to be full width on my 32” monitor. I have loads of other sites that I’m jumping between which do need to take up the full space.

I mean newspapers have a narrower columnar layout than any website and they’ve been around for centuries.

I don't mind limiting content-width. I do mind the trinity of plz-scroll-to-read-two-words: content-width limiting, bigger fonts, bigger line height.

Most websites abuse the latter two, and makes my mouse wheel spin like a meth addict without a dose.

Please keep the default font size. It's aligned with the system's size, and is precisely what a browser's zoom function will scale.

> I, the user, can already control the content width by resizing my browser, thank you very much.

But I, the user, do not. And I will not. Because there are a bazillion websites that I want to browse in a maximized browser window. So limiting the content width help people like me who cannot/would not resize my browser.

I've been on the internet since the 90s and this might be the worst opinion I've ever encountered.

Please don't listen to this. You are in an incredibly small minority with that preference. Most readers prefer a line length of 50-75 characters, similar to a novel. Newspaper columns are even narrower than that for easier scanning. If I have to move my head or resize my browser to read your content, it's poorly formatted.

Have you ever read a newspaper? Or you don't even have to read one, just look at the layout

I wonder why light/dark themes became the norm in a couple of years, but we are still begging for the wide/narrow themes or two or three themes with different font sizes. Those would be very useful as well. And I'm as guilty as the next dev of course.

Yes you can already resize the window or zoom but that oftentimes break the design in some way.

Well, nothing happen in tech before it's a trend, so let's just wait and hope.

> Despite what [...] studies say, I prefer [...]

It's nice of you to consider only your own perspective.

I, the user on a mobile device, cannot resize my browser. This used to be supported for a very short period of time (I think? I might be remembering the short period of time Firefox and Chrome were available as fullscreen-only Windows 8 Metro apps) but it's not anymore.