Daring Fireball
is hard to
read because
the website
is so poorly
formatted.
I rarely
make it
past the
first
paragraph.
The font is
too small,
the margins
are too huge
and the colors
have poor
contrast.
It's certainly memorable though, and that must help his personal brand. I don't like it either, but I wouldn't dismiss it as a bad idea from his perspective.
Margins are irrelevant; it's the column width that matters.
I agree that the font size is too small (I use the NoSquint plug-in to remember a 200% zoom for it) but the column width is bang on with about ten words per line.
Scroll to the bottom, and click "Display Preferences", and crank the font size to 16 pt, instead of the default 11. At least that's what I did. You may find 16 too big, season to taste :)
The margins are not too huge. That statement makes no sense at all.
There are about 75 character per line, that’s pretty much the sweet spot for characters per line. Going for a few more characters would be ok (120 is a usual guideline for the maximum), but 75 is pretty good. It’s actually pretty much the standard. I learned 60 to 90 characters per line.
Margins are your problem. Your browser is too wide. (I agree that the font is much too small. Also, Verdana is seriously ugly. A better font at a larger size would reduce the size of your margins, even if you are one of those strange fullscreen browser people.)