Readability - CD/web site

[Laurel Hickey]

For the intranet, you can have two style sheets -- one for viewing and one
for printing. Depending on how the pages are set up, you can NOT print
certain defined areas (like the graphics at the top) and the menu (need
their own unique ids) and you can specify background and text styles and
colours that are different than for the screen style sheet. 

For example, the print css file could have this in it which restricts
printing of some areas, leaves the background plain and lets the page reflow
to the paper size:


body {
	background-color: #ffffff;
	font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
#maincontent {
	font-size: 0.7em;
	line-height: 1.5em;
	}

#maincontentwide {
	font-size: 0.7em;
	line-height: 1.5em;
	}

#sidebar, #introControls, .navbar, .navheading {display: none;}



While the regular css file could have this:
body {
	background-image:  url("../images_layout/xxx_pbg.jpg");
	background-color: #B6A29B;
	color: #333333;
	font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	font-size: 101%;
	margin: 24px 0;
	min-width: 748px;
	padding: 0;
}

#maincontentwide {
	background-color: #F8F9F1;
	float: left;
	font-size: 0.8em;
	line-height: 1.5em;
	padding: 0 24px;
	width: 670px; /*528*/
	text-align: left;
}

For a more detailed explaination and how to tell the browser which css to
use for when, see http://www.alistapart.com/stories/goingtoprint/


-------------------------------------
Laurel Hickey
2morrow writing & document design
lhickey at 2morrow.bc.ca
http://www.2morrow.bc.ca

>
> Do you know of any readability studies available on the web that 
> reference what background color/font color/font size & type is easiest 
> to read on a CD or web site.  Our long term goal is to include a good 
> deal of this content on our intranet site, so it would be helpful if 
> the CD & web site had a similar layout.  I'm researching this on 
> Google, but I thought I'd check here too.  I'm guessing I could find 
> something on Jakob Nielsen's site.


I'd say one of the reasons not to choose white on black is that is makes
printing the pages (if that's a concern) absolutely horriffic. Depending on
the browser and settings, you either end up with nothing, or (worst case)
you waste an awful lot of ink....