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Subject:Re: Which do you prefer? Why? From:Jean Hollis Weber <jean -at- jeanweber -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 01 Jan 2003 20:24:10 +1000
For me, http://www.editors-writers.info/stpaul5.html is the clear winner.
It's a nice clean design, adjusts well to different window or monitor
sizes, screen resolutions, and font sizes, and is easy to read even though
the first page requires a lot of scrolling. I find that reading multiple
columns onscreen is difficult. Some minor problems: the right-hand column
is a bit wide and the margins are too large, so the text in that column has
little space. This causes a particular problem with the indented material
in the regular mass schedule. I also like the background pattern on the
left-hand column and the nice strong blue-gray of the right-hand column.
I like the general layout of stpaul3.html, at least the two-column bit, but
the margin on the right-hand side seems unnecessarily wide and the
three-column bit ends up with very narrow columns because of that, at some
font sizes. I would make the left-hand column a bit narrower and the
right-hand margin quite a bit narrower. This layout gets my second-place
vote, if the problems were cleaned up. It's a bit old-fashioned looked, but
not excessively so, and might be suitable for the conservative image of a
church.
I don't like stpaul.html because it's a fixed-width layout. I wonder how
many members of the target audience might be still using 640x480 screen
resolutions? I've been a bit startled recently to discover how many people
still have small monitors and/or keep their screen res low for various
reasons (including not knowing how to change them). With a fixed-width
layout, those folks would need to scroll to see the third column.
stpaul2.html has the same problem.
stpaul4.html is better, because the page width isn't fixed, but I still
don't like it. Because it's three columns, at a low screen res (or small
window size) the columns get rather narrow and unsightly.
A comment on all the pages:
I congratulate you on not using fixed-sized fonts, so I could view the
pages without a lot of hassle (I keep my fonts quite large so I can read
them easily). However, at a large font size, the spacing in the text gets
quite unsightly in places, because you are using full justification in most
places (although this use is a bit inconsistent). Changing to left-aligned
would make this look much better at any resolution.
Regards, Jean
Jean Hollis Weber
jean -at- jeanweber -dot- com
The Technical Editors' Eyrie http://www.jeanweber.com/
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