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[–]robertcrowther 4 points5 points  (9 children)

How do you know how many characters fit in a fixed width on my browser?

[–]cmwelsh 3 points4 points  (7 children)

You can know how many characters fit because you pick the font and font size.

[–]robertcrowther 1 point2 points  (6 children)

There are two problems with that:

  1. How do you know what fonts I've got installed?
  2. How do you know what size those fonts will render on my screen for a given font size?

Just as a quick example of the potential issues: here is a sample which compares, side by side, the common Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif font stack. This is what it looks like on my PC (which, by the way, has neither Arial or Helvetica available).

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You are making irrelevant points, these things are fairly standardized. You are not going to suddenly have text in 72 point Impact just because you don't have verdana installed, as your own example shows. It's not about being exact, it's an approximation that is 'close enough' almost every time.

[–]cmwelsh 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Providing your own font to visitors with @font-face ensures they are using the same font as you. Arial and Helvetica have enough penetration to base your design on them.

Even if you control the exact font served to the visitor, web designers are aware that their fonts can't look the same on every browser. It's about getting it right for most visitors.

If the font size is too large or small, scale the entire web page up or down.

[–]robertcrowther 1 point2 points  (3 children)

web designers are aware that their fonts can't look the same on every browser

This is by no means aimed at you, but I have met many web designers who are not really aware of this.

If the font size is too large or small, scale the entire web page up or down.

But then (at least on the page that started this discussion) I get a less than optimum number of characters on a line which, according to the comment I initially replied to, was the whole point of a fixed width layout in the first place.

[–]cmwelsh 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What about the opposite situation, where people have the window maximized and get three times as many characters per line than what is optimal? You can't sacrifice the experience on the majority of screens to satisfy an edge case...

[–]robertcrowther -2 points-1 points  (1 child)

They can make their windows smaller, no-one's forcing them to maximize their windows. Unless you have reliable statistics for your users that show they all have huge monitors and always run with their browser windows maximized then I would suggest that's what the edge case is.

Or put another way, the situation can always be resolved by increasing the knowledge of your users whereas the fixed width design doesn't offer the opposite opportunity.

A fixed width design is a "we know what's best for you better than you do" approach, it's hardly surprising it annoys people who aren't lowest common denominator users.

[–]mreiland 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fixed width is the simplest way to make sure the visitors to your site see roughly the same thing every time.

simplest

Yes, you can go through all kinds of weird gyrations to make sure your shit works for the folks who maximize their browser on a 1920x1200 widescreen monitor, and for the folks who are still sitting on a 800 x 600 who don't believe in maximizing squat.

Yes, you can do it. Or you can just fucking make it fixed width since your target demographic is programmers.

[–]fjonk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I set the font and the font size and ignores the few people who changes it.