Addison Hall—Eclectic Yet Related

Look Ma! No pixels!

28 March 2006

Well, almost. The redesign of this site was my first expedition into the realm of ems and percentages—and being stripped of the controlling comfort of pixels. Along the way, I was mindful of a couple of other issues that have concerned me with web design. Here’s sort of what I was thinking.

Flexible layout

This is the big one—leaving pixel-perfect layouts behind in exchange for the more accessible interface. And by accessibility, I’m referring mostly to readability. As I previously mentioned, I favor this type of layout since it scales both the text and the column width when font sizing is altered by the user. The only restriction is the browser width, but at least there’s the opportunity for the line-length to stay reasonable.

Blinding white

Another issue I found problematic is the question of foreground and background color—dark on light or light on dark. In my opinion, a solid white screen can be a little overwhelming to the eyes, but light text on a dark screen can be just as straining in larger doses, so I compromised. A darker background keeps the brightness to a minimum while a lighter container for my text provides better readability. It’s certainly not a perfect solution, but it suffices for now.

Sans over serif

I truly love Georgia (the screen font by Matthew Carter), but finally gave in and switched back over to good ol’ Verdana (also by Matthew Carter). Its open forms and simple structure are right at home on screen—especially at text sizes. Georgia performs onscreen better than any other serif I’ve seen, but the sans-serifs simply appear easier on the eyes.

These are relatively small issues regarding web interface design, but since I enjoy the typographic aspect of the web, I like to be picky. And since the majority of content on the web is intended to be read, why shouldn’t I be?

See also:

• Mark Boulton’s articles on typography
• The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web
• Web Style Guide, 2nd Edition