DU Journals

[GOPFighter]

I just set up my Journal and found out that if you have any photos in your Journal entries that are wider than about 600 pixels your entire Journal will extend off the screen to the right (if you use Full-Text format, if you use Short-Blurb Format you're okay). I found this out by trial and error. If anyone else has had experience with this, let me know if I'm wrong about the width.

Other than that the new Journal feature is great!

[GOPFighter]

1. Um...

It looks like the limit may actually be less than 600 pixels wide. With my widest photo at 576 pixels my Journal still extends off the screen to the right. :mad:

[Whoa_Nelly]

2. Tried the Short Blurb setting

All my pics went bye-bye. Only had the thread title and the text :shrug:

[CC]

3. Some will depend on each person's

screen size and resolution. I decided people could scroll of the want or close if they don't want to scroll. Though I did resize the march pics since the one was sooooooo long.

Oh and I did put a link to the Smugmug page for the group. http://photogroup.smugmug.com/

[intheflow]

4. I noticed my photos semed bigger

but they didn't seem to go off the page unless it was one of my panoramics. Most of my photos are 800 pixels or less. I just resized my panoramics, which I've always considred too wide and thus obnoxious anyway.

I do like that you can link to the photo group in the journal, even though usually someone would have to be a member to see a photo group post.

[TahitiNut]

5. While it depends on the viewer's window size in pixels ...

... and the chosen layout for the Journal, it's true that Full-Text posting of photos/graphics more often than not will cause excessive width.

While a lot of people have weighed in with various rationales for the 'optimum' size for an embedded photo, I'd like to offer my viewpoint regarding this.

I set my window width to a size that makes reading the text of a posting the easiest for me. Studies regarding the ability of people to track across a line of text are legion and go back centuries. The width of the printed text, along with leading, is what drove the design of some of the most well-known fonts, the Times font in particular. Generally speaking, a serif font is easier to track than a sans serif font. (That's what the serifs are for.) Fonts with varying stoke widths are more legible at smaller sizes than fonts with fixed stroke widths. I could go on at some length regarding font design, leading (the vertical distance between lines of text), and kerning (the varying lateral distance between two individual letters) but it all amounts to the same thing: the width of the window is a way of managing the legibility.

Since the font we use to view DU posts defaults to a sans serif font with uniform stroke width, typically Ariel or an equivalent, wider window dimensions quite quickly degrade the legibility.

While this does not eliminate the considerations regarding monitor resolution (since folks with higher resolution monitors often use larger fonts with resulting higher resolutions), I think it's important to remember that text readability is the foremost consideration when people think at all about setting a window size. Generally speaking, I don't think a window width greater than about 900 pixels is very common. At the same time, as the screen layout changes from an effective 1-column mode (in the forums) to a 3-column mode (in the Journals) the optimum width of the viewing window becomes greater.


All that being said, after playing around, I doubt that I'll either use or bother to read Journals with graphics larger than about 550 pixels in width. The whole reason I even think about this is because I respect the reader. Increasingly, I expect that in return. When I don't see a 'reader-focus' I tend to ignore the poster/Journal. After all, if the poster doesn't evidently respect the reader why should I regard what they have to say favorably? It seems to me that photographers might appreciate this more than the general public, so I take the liberty of addressing this audience in this fashion.

</soapbox>

[RagingInMiami]

6. And on that note

My personal pet peeve is when people don't use paragraphs, people who write large chunks of information in a single block of wordage.

I usually don't bother reading these because I find myself unable to follow the sentences.

[TahitiNut]

7. I agree.

A looong time ago, I was taught that such legibility ("eye wash") was the respect an author showed the reader. While I'm often not successful, I'm almost always conscious of making what I write easier to read without compromising content. Spelling, grammar, format, emphasis, layout, and other factors all affect the reader's perceptions.