What are some of the issues you need to consider when designing text for the web?

Today, more and amore documents are intended for web sit distribution. Some of these documents will only be read on-screen and never printed. Other readers will print your publication on a desktop ink-jet or laser printer for later off line reading, however.

As Hardware and software costs continues to drop and new technologies such as computing and wireless devices gain popularity, more and more documents may never be printed in the traditional sense of the word. For this reason documents will often need to be re-written for the changing times.

Potential problem Areas

As a general rule, always design for the worst possible circumstances. If you design for “worst case” scenarios, not only will your design survive the harshest of reading circumstances, but your design will be even more successful in normal, everyday circumstances For

Remember that Online reading is harder than normal

On screen reading is far more difficult than reading a printed document because of the differ way your readers eyes encounter your message. Onscreen reading involves projected light.

Your readers are, in effect, starting into the lens of a slide projector. The individual letters making up your message are projected onto the screen. This creates more foreground/background contrast or difference in brightness levels than involved when reading a printed document. This added contrast increases eye fatigue.

Reading a printed document involves reflected light . The letters stand out against their background because the black letters and white background absorb different amounts of light. As a result, the contrast range is not as much, so there’s less eye fatigue.

Partial Page View

Another difference between print and onscreen reading involves the limited amount of text visible at a time on scree. When reading a printed document, readers can se the entire page, typically a vertical rectangle.

Without physical activity, scrolling though the page or moving their head, they can quickly skim the document, going directly to point of great interest and easily seeing how the individual paragraph they’re reading relates to the page as a whole. They can easily read from the bottom of one column to the top of the next.

Onscreen reading, however, typically reveals only a horizontal rectangular view of a page. This makes it harder for visitors to get a “big picture” view of what they’re reading. It also makes it difficult to return from the bottom of the page to the top of the page. Readers of pint publications encounter an entire page at a time.

Reference: Parker, Roger, 2003, Looking Good in Print, Paraglyph Press