I think Skellie is suggesting that lines shouldn’t be too long. Probably that’s because the received wisdom from newspaper/magazine layout testing is that readers start to struggle after about 32ems wide and really don’t cope with more than 64ems wide unless you increase line spacing. (Readers lose track of which line they’re on, as their eyes move back from the end of one line to the start of the next.)

Personally, I’d say it’s more important to use liquid layout with a max-width on your post body text than to keep to some arbitrary fixed width. Most of my browser windows are half-width so I can put two side-by-side easily (what’s the point of a windowed user interface if you don’t use it) but that means I override problogger’s new sucky-fixed-width stylesheet. I’ll do that because it’s problogger and it’s good, but most of the time, I’ll just mutter “dumbo web designer” and click the Back button instead. Skellie’s anywired.com is better, but still seems to be completely solid/non-liquid at first glance.

Having depth in the subject of blog and authority will also improve quality visitors.

Thank you.

Nice greetings from stormy Europe :)

Thanks for the explanation. I hadn’t thought about the margins as a design element. At least not quite like that.

Beau

At times however, the ability to customize these elements may be limited by the abilities of the blog service. Some blog services only allow limited customizations, and thus does not provide the flexibility needed for the areas you have mentioned. However, I also think that if this happens, it may be time to consider hosting a blog on your own.

Cheers!
Samantha
http://www.what-sells-online.com

1) for TzuVelli (March 8th, 2008 2:10 am)

I think what Skellie means that a good web page has wide margins on the sides (like THIS page), where nothing is printed or shown.
This adds up to 1/3 the width of the page.
It helps focus the web surfer on the content you want to present.

2) for careerbright (March 8th, 2008 11:31 am)

1. Hi! I use Blogger, and the contact details are tucked away in the compulsory Profile widget, if you want to provide them within.

This Profile thingy by default usually appears on the top right (or left), when you first choose their pre-constructed templates and layouts.

Whenever you update your Profile, you can choose to add as many or few details as you see fit.

2. I find putting a photo to the Profile, draws attention to this widget on the main page,

I’ve added at least my email address inside the Profile, for contact purposes.

3. Effectiveness? I’m no expert, so I don’t know.
I would have preferred more obvious options on Blogger for providing communication details, but I do my best with what I get.

3) to Andrew Boyd (March 8th, 2008 2:00 pm)

Thank you for the reference to Steve Krug and his ‘Don’t make me think’ work.

I found a sample chapter (#2) of his book on display, at his website Advanced common sense:

http://www.sensible.com/chapter.html

Simple but helpful.

one of the things I have seen in more than ten years of professional usability work is that “it all depends” – i.e. it is hard to make generalisations/suggest best practices that work for everybody.

You’ve done a good job :)

If anyone is interested in learning more, they could do worse than read Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make Me Think” – it is the best simplest advice I’ve seen.

Cheers, Andrew

Jeremy, you’re right–Technorati hasn’t sent me a single visitor in months. What am I paying them for, anyway?

Limit options is one of the thing that I should tweak around.In my previous blog ( maheshexp.wordpress.com ) I had more categories and sub categories that finally made me one day , very confusing to post a blog item in a certain category. Now it’s all new blog and hence gonna make things fresh and clean.

But I still have a doubt on, how much screen size does the post should occupy?