Every so often we enjoy getting the chance to fire up a lively debate about certain Siteflex features - whether or not we should scale them up, down or remove them entirely. At the end of the day it always comes back to the same thing: what is best for your day to day website user?
 

Keep It Simple

In the interest of making things simple and easy to use, a good approach is being brutal with what functionality is and is not permitted. The Google homepage is a great example of how something simple can be appealing, and a rewarding usability experience.

Often when deciding on functionality it comes down to user behaviour. How often is something used, but also how is it used?

Recently, we have been working on readying the latest iteration of the Siteflex Editor to finally come out of beta. But our critical eye has fallen upon one particular editor feature that's presence has been taken for granted.

 

Justifed Text

Why do you exist? Should you?

Justifed Text on the web is primarily a seemingly attractive design prospect due to the neat blocks of text it creates; as opposed to left-align's jagged right edges. But does this feature actually enhance the web user's experience?

The Siteflex Editor's Justified Text function turned up on our radar mainly as a feature that could be used to negatively affect a website's readability, but also as a consistency conern. Why would select portions of content be justified? Surely this situation would be better handled elsewhere, whether in a site's standard styling or as a particular type of heading, quote or section style.

But it's more than just consistency. While justified text works well in some situations, such as in a printed newspaper, why doesn't it work on the web?
 

• Poor implementation. Justified text has received a poor implementation across many web browsers, the option will often create rivers of white space and sometimes excessively space out words. Part of the reason for this is because it does not, in many web browsers, properly hyphenate words where needed. Mind you, the hyphenation options have recently improved in both Firefox 6 and Safari 5.
   
• Lessens readability. Even with hypenated words present, the readability effect is generally lessened with justified text on the web. In print design, the designer has the ability to fine tune the spacing between words to lessen the negative effects of white-space columns and word hyphenation.
  
  While the opposite can also be true - with jagged, chaotic right edges of text being a negative to readability - the general consensus is that the standard left aligned text is a better option than hyphenated and/or justified web text.
   
• Acts as a distraction. The vast majority of websites contain standard left aligned text. Web users are comfortable with it. When our eye comes across justified text we are often distracted, if not puzzled why the text looks like it does.
  
  Hyphenated words are often regarded as hurting readability at worst, and a distraction at best. This is probably a fair enough position, since this technique is breaking a single word into two parts.
   
• More room, more text. Much comparison gets made to print when comparing typography techniques, but printed media often has different space restrictions. With more room to play with on the web it reduces the need for justified text as a solution.
   
• No control. Text on the web is truly dynamic. Not only will different browsers show different results, most browsers have the ability to quickly resize text larger or smaller. With such a lack of control over the justified text (which some consider an art form!) the results may be unsatisfactory on an all too frequent basis.

 

 

Digging Further

Not happy with merely our own thoughts on the topic, we asked for the thoughts of a number of designers who work with Siteflex. All shared similar concerns regarding the ability of justified text to appear well formatted on a website.

It tends to be harder to read unless formatted well enough to avoid inconsistency of spacing between words. Web doesn't give as much flexibility as print in the output of text so most of the time justified text will look bad in a browser.
-Peter Ford, Solutions Outsourced

We also came across this great article from UK-based Semlyen IT Consultants, have a read for another take on the topic, which focuses more on accessibility concerns: Can justified text be justifed for the web? FontDeck has a blog article of note regarding hyphenation option now available in some web browsers: Hyphenation arrives in Firefox and Safari. Continuing on along on a related tangent, Smashing Magazine has a great article: Mind Your En And Em Dashes: Typographic Etiquette. Want to delve even deeper? Check out this Bram Stein article on typography.

There is definitely more to this topic than we first thought!

 

Goodbye, Justify Text

There is no doubt that Justified Text - even on the web and even in it's current state - can be used for good, not just evil. From a designer standpoint, it's great to have the increasing amount choices regarding typography. However, when all is said and done, the consistency aspect of this cannot be ignored when considering whether or not to remove this option from the Siteflex Content Editor.

Verdict: It's gone!

Siteflex Users: Using the beta Siteflex Editor? Can you see the Flash icon? Refresh your cache to see this change in effect.

Do you have any thoughts of your own on Siteflex usability? We'd love to hear from you; get in contact and let the team know.