

Blog design best practice: Scrollbars not sidebars - briancray
http://briancray.com/2009/08/26/blog-design-information-overload-progressive-disclosure/

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pmichaud
Here's a counter point, though. For readability, you should make your text
blocks around 33em wide, which is about 66 characters. If you lose the side
bar, you have to choose between really long lines, which suck, or multiple
columns which is a chore at best, and impossible at worst since columns only
really work in the format of a "page," since the reader would potentially have
to scroll down then scroll back up for the next column.

So my caveat is that if you lose the side bar, don't allow your text to expand
willy nilly!

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benatkin
Good point, except for not practicing what you preach (perhaps that will come
later?). The social networking section above the comments takes up more than a
third of the height of my screen.

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onreact-com
Well, in your case the ads (secondary information) are above the fold/scroll
as well and they are quite distracting.

Also there is the issue of too broad text chunks known both in typography and
usability for making reading more difficult.

Apart from that I tend to agree with you.

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briancray
The broad text chunks are certainly a problem, but recent studies have proven
that longer line lengths promote faster reading:
[http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200509/line_length_and...](http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200509/line_length_and_readability/)

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marc28443
well, this seems to be a fairly balanced summary of the research (available if
you explore the link you mention):

<http://blog.fawny.org/2005/09/21/measures/>

In essence, most studies indicate longer line length leads to faster reading.
But also, people on average seem to prefer having a moderate line length over
a longer one.

In my view the latter measure is more important. I'd rather have a layout
which is more pleasing than one which is faster to read.

(Of course ideally you have a variable-width layout so the reader can choose
himself)

