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It’s All about Shorter Lines

Don’t be fooled by the background and glitz. What this is all about for me is shorter lines.

Thanks, Igor and Neil, for chiming in. Your feedback is was I wanted to hear.

If I am understanding correctly, the width is bad on your phones when I use the 2-column display. Is it also bad with the single-column format used in this message?

I have been testing these styles on a Nook tablet, where they display correctly. It uses a proprietary version of Android (2.2 or 2.3, I believe). The second column drops down correctly, and the browser window sizes nicely to show only one column. The only error made by the Droid browser is to extend the shaded background about 0.75 inches farther than it should. But the extra space is hidden off screen, because the Nook zooms in to the correct size.

Using the Nook, I have compared regular BGO messages to my stylized ones, and find I prefer the latter. A big part of it is the font. The Times New Roman default used by BGO is not nearly as readable as the Verdana or sans-serif invoked by my styles. If I can get the width to work on your phones, I think you might find you prefer the sans-serif font yourselves.

Getting Technical

The styles I am using conform to CSS 2.1. When a browser follows the standard, the boxes should be “shrinkwrapped,” so that the shading is pulled back all the way to the boundary of the text. My Nook is making a small error on this; your cell phones, a much larger one. Part of the problem may be that Stick’s HTML runs in “quirks” mode, but I am unsure.

The answer may be to use only the single column. Please let me know if it sizes correctly on your phones.

The Problem with Large Screens

Most often, I use my laptop to view BGO. It has an HD-type screen, with a 16:9 aspect ratio. On that screen, the text in a BGO post is way too wide. When a message is any longer than 2 or 3 lines, it becomes very hard to read. I generally work with my browser window maximized, so it is inconvenient for me to resize it just to view one web site. Nevertheless, that’s what I usually do when Phil, or someone else (me?), gets really reved up.

That’s why my posts have had short lines almost from the start. In a sense, there is very little difference between the single-column format used in this message, and the posts I have written in the past. If anything, the new format should be easier to read on a cell phone, because the lines are shorter. Besides the font change, the only other difference is the shaded background.

Don’t be fooled by the background and glitz. What this is all about for me is shorter lines.

Mike

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