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Wikipedia has released their new layout, which unsurprisingly includes whitespace bars on either side, justified by the claim "most people prefer a column 60-80 characters wide" (although it's not that extreme).
The changes being introduced are not very dramatic — in fact, they may not even be immediately noticed by some users. The organization, however, says the update was necessary in order to meet the needs of the next generation of internet users, including those who are more newly coming online and may have less familiarity with the internet.
To develop the new interface, the foundation engaged with more than 30 different volunteer groups from around the world, with users in places like India, Indonesia, Ghana and Argentina, among others, all helping to test the update and provide insights into the product development. The goal for the update was to make Wikipedia more of a modern web platform, it said, and to remove clutter, while also making it easier for users to contribute. It additionally aimed to make the desktop web version more consistent with Wikipedia's mobile counterpart.
It is possible to go back to the old layout, if you log in to the site and set it in your preferences.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:16AM (3 children)
I think that newspaper column size probably stems from something other than readability. They tend to be about the minimum width that you can have without making justified type show too much bad spacing and bad breaks. And probably the demands of layout flexibility, especially in the era of physical type. Maybe even for efficiency when setting type (and making corrections) in the Linotype era (where you had to replace the entire line when making a fix).
For readable ink on paper, they had Times New Roman :)
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:27AM
Yeah, I'd thought about typesetting issues too but wasn't sure what the factor would be, since this goes back to manual typesetting the formatting of text to fit around the very narrow columns must have been a huge PITA, but as you say it may have been a convenience factor, changing a few words in a narrow column is much easier than re-setting a full-page line. Anyone know if there was any advantage to using very narrow vs. wide composing sticks in manual typesetting?
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday January 25 2023, @01:34AM
As a followup, since the multi-column print format predates any studies on its readability by several centuries it's likely it was adopted for some reason other than readability. A quick Google isn't turning up anything but I'm guessing there was some practical reason to lay it out that way.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday January 26 2023, @01:51AM
Also in places like New York, there's a way of finding a paper with columns like that which takes up fast less space. I've seen it done and have no idea how to do it, but effectively each page is folded in half.