Simon Willison’s Weblog

Page Readability Bookmarks

2nd August 2003

I’ve long been a proponent of flexible web pages rather than restricting sites to a hard coded width in pixels, but now that I’ve started surfing at 1280x1024 I’m beginning to realise how true the statements about an optimum width for readable text really are. The simple solution would be to surf with my browser window resized to a sensible size, but old habits die hard. Instead, I made myself the following bookmarklet:

Narrow

It resizes the current page to be 500 pixels wide, which for most flexible designs makes the text much easier to read. It’s only tested on Firebird. I also find Verdana to be the most readable of the web fonts, so I’ve created the following bookmarklet which alters the default text style for the page—ideal for reading Slashdot ;)

Verdana

Both bookmarklets are extremely simple, but I have been using them all day and have found them very useful.