Hey, xjay. If you do a hard reload in your browser, you should see that the encyclopedic data is now bound to a 32em width (with a smaller font size). Does that look a bit better to you?
The idea is to have a maximum line length that makes sense to human beings, and that's what the site does now. It is very pleasant to read the text.
Thanks for considering the feedback.
PS: The typographical rule I based 32em on comes from the general rule that, there should at least be room for two alphabets (a-z) on one line. I found 32em to be a sweet spot. The em unit scales in proportion to whatever pixel size you choose for the font, or whatever font size I tell my browser to enforce, so it's highly consistent.
PPS: Another bonus for having a sensible maximum line length, is something I'd never thought about unless it happened to me. It's the nuisance called eye floaters. It's basically an obstruction that floats around in your vision. So whenever the eye moves, the obstruction will dash across your field of view to follow, before coming to rest again. The less the eye has to move in general, the better.
PPPS: For HN (and wikipedia) I eventually ended up making a CSS rule that would override the width of various sections, to comply with the human inside. It's just that there is no line-length attribute, so it must be hacked together specifically for each trouble site.
Thanks for the info, and again, I really do appreciate the feedback! I don't want people to have to make up their own rules for things simply because the defaults aren't sensible. For this particular project, certain UI considerations were deferred until later. I never expected this post to garner more than a handful of views, so needless to say, it was an abrupt call to action to start fixing those things once it broke 10,000+ views.
Thanks for considering the feedback.
PS: The typographical rule I based 32em on comes from the general rule that, there should at least be room for two alphabets (a-z) on one line. I found 32em to be a sweet spot. The em unit scales in proportion to whatever pixel size you choose for the font, or whatever font size I tell my browser to enforce, so it's highly consistent.
PPS: Another bonus for having a sensible maximum line length, is something I'd never thought about unless it happened to me. It's the nuisance called eye floaters. It's basically an obstruction that floats around in your vision. So whenever the eye moves, the obstruction will dash across your field of view to follow, before coming to rest again. The less the eye has to move in general, the better.
PPPS: For HN (and wikipedia) I eventually ended up making a CSS rule that would override the width of various sections, to comply with the human inside. It's just that there is no line-length attribute, so it must be hacked together specifically for each trouble site.