Note that on smaller viewports (not necessarily physical screens) the content will limit itself to the available space, so in these situations both options produce the same results. Example below.
While the lines are shortened, the content still sits in the center of the screen so the visual balance (left and right) is maintained.
The sidebar still is on the expected place at the left most section of the viewport.
Cons
It’s different from the default of XWiki standard.
Large monitors can feel empty and underutilized.
The gap between sidebar and content can be very large, especially on ultrawide resolutions.
2. Full width content
Pros
All available space is used, regardless of line length.
Space between the sidebar and content is consistent
Retains the historic default of XWiki
Cons
It can be very hard to follow a long text when jumping between lines
It’s different from established apps on the market. Users coming from other platforms to experiment with Cristal might feel at odds with the default choice.
So here are my questions:
What option you feel should be the default on Cristal?
Would you prefer it as a user option in real time, (on the page menu for example) and only for the current page. Or a general preference that would apply to all pages on the Wiki?
Do you have any other comments or options that should be considered?
Thank you all for reading!
Edit: Filled the bigger screenshots with lorem ipsum text to better show the effects being discussed.
I tend to prefer the left-aligned version for the default. Probably because I’m used to it and it has the best of both worlds to me:
If I want a smaller viewport for the text, I can reduce the windows size
If I want to be fullscreen to see the maximum of content, I can have this too
Whereas with the always-centered + small viewport width option, I can never make use of my large screen if I want, I can only reduce the width by reducing the window’s width.
BTW I wonder why we never got this request for XWiki (or not many times), as we don’t have this option ATM, and at first sight it doesn’t seem hard to implement.
You mentioned a user setting to decide which option to use. Would that setting also allow controlling the width size for the centered option? or is it meant to be smallish as in your screenshot.
What are the dimensions we’re optimizing Cristal for? For XWiki, it was 1024x768 at some point AFAIR (can’t find a link ATM to verify this). All I’ve found is [xwiki-devs] [Brainstorming] Minimal supported resolution? . I don’t remember if we have re-discussed this in the history of XWiki.
It is much more effective to do the hard work to ensure that it works well on a mobile device and then scale it up to larger interfaces.
I did a (very empiric) review of line length on various medias (e.g., medium, mediapart, lemonde, the times, notion) and the line length (in number of characters) for the main content seems to vary between 70 and 100.
The web is already a pretty bad experience if you use a super-large viewport.
This is a medium article on a 4000px wide monitor without scaling.
per-user: a user can decide to make all pages “wide” or “narrow”
per-page: the page editor can decide if a page is “wide” or “narrow” (this is what outline or notion are doing, note that in this case the rest of the page layout is unchanged and only the content width is impacted, which implies moving some elements such as the page actions outside the page content)
To give my opinion on the initial question,
I’m +1 for centered content by default, with an option to change the configuration.
Mainly because I believe having a limited width is better for reading and writing experience and this is what a wiki UI needs to focus on.
Personally, I prefer the limited width version as I find it easier to read, however I don’t necessarily think it needs to be centered, it could also be left aligned if we give it enough margin on the sides.
If it is centered though, I think the extra space on the sides would allow us to show annotations/comments inline with the text they’re referencing (which is something some of our users have asked for). It could also double as a kind of “zen mode” on larger displays.
Even though it might not look perfect on wide screens, I don’t think that should be our focus. The truth of the matter is that most people don’t use ultra wide displays. It would be nice if we could optimize for them as well, however we shouldn’t sacrifice on usability for 90% of users just to satisfy the remaining 10%.
If we want to allow customization of this option, we could do something similar to what Wikipedia is currently doing, and offer a “Standard” and a “Wide” option for people to chose from.
This is my thinking process:
knowledge management → understanding the knoweldge effortlessly → readability → optimizing the line length → centered content
This should be the default, obviously with the option to go full width for public websites or big dashboards
knowledge management → viewing the maximum of knowledge at once so that I can visually scan it and focus on the important parts (it’s not a book that users are reading, I really don’t believe that learning on the web is the same as reading a book) → optimizing the space available → content using the max width.
As a thought experiment, if you have to learn something on the web, do you feel it’s more comfortable to use your desktop computer or your phone? My preference is for the desktop computer by far because I have a larger view and see linked topics, see where to click to navigate, etc. OTOH if I need to read a book, ie read line after line without caring about the context and without jumping, then I’d prefer the phone.
PS: I’m fine with center being the default if that’s what our users are asking, provided it’s configurable. I’m just answering for the sake of discussing it
I think it’s the wrong comparison to make. Centering the content would never make the content as narrow as a phone does. Also, mobile position of text has the big disadvantage that it doesn’t have enough (or at all) white space around it. The white space gives a sense of peace/tidiness.
I’ve always preferred getting my information from websites that format the info in a way that it doesn’t feel overwhelming, especially if it’s a big project I’m working on or new info that I need to focus on. (layouts like Medium’s or Notion’s prove that many users feel the same). I think anyone that uses a wiki might want the same thing. If they don’t, the configuration will always be available.
Centering the content just enables the mind to read more comfortably and not be overwhelmed.
Most of the time, preserved knowledge is not always concise or made into dashboard-like layouts. For me, seeing a full-length, not enough white space page of insights doesn’t provide me more usefulness, it just screams “Oh boy, you have a lot of work ahead, aren’t you happy?”
It’s true that if we are talking about a dashboard, full-length pages are the way to go. But that is HEAVILY formatted knowledge, and most knowledge is NOT heavily formatted.
