Justin, Now I have water to throw on the fire brought forth by the designers here! ;)
I do understand that the <br>'s are doing more harm then good, so thank you for offering your perspective as a designer. I always speak up when the designers ask for a break here or a break there and let them know the dangling text is unavoidable; it's like you say, A particular machine with ITS particular fonts, etc, etc. will always show slightly different results. *sigh* thanks again! Zulema � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � z u l e m a o r t i z w e b d e s i g n e r email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] website : http://zoblue.com/ weblog : http://blog.zoblue.com/ � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � Quoting Justin French <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Zulema, > > First and foremost, I am a designer, so please take this advice from > someone who understands really beautiful typography, but also > understands when the web won't comply. > > This is definitely a case of "don't bother". For starters, you're > typesetting those orphans and widows on YOUR screen, with YOUR fonts, > with YOUR resolution, with YOUR browser. The problem is, what looks > "perfect" on your screen will be an absolute mess on someone else's, > because your hard-coded <br />'s will more than likely appear mid-line > on someone else's system. > > This is an unavoidable reality which you need to accept and move on: > <br />'s are doing WAY more harm than good - they're not a typesetting > tool, they're designed to be used in things like poetry, where a break > in the flow of the text is intended. > > > Most typographic resources discuss orphans and widows in reference to > lines which are separated from the rest of their paragraph over a page > break or column break. However in this case, I assume you mean single > words that are pushed down to a line all by themselves, like the last > word in a paragraph, right? > > Assuming this is what you want to prevent, then the quickest "hack" I > can think of is to use a no break space ( ) inbetween the last two > words in each paragraph, forcing them to appear on the same line. > However this isn't much of a solution. > > As you no doubt know, the problem with this is that sometimes forcing > the 2nd-last word down as well will cause the preceding line to appear > quite short, in which case you'd bump other words around until the > paragraph was well-balanced. This is simply not possible with HTML, > due to the lack of control you have over the user's environment and > settings, and the fact that you can't *visually* look at the paragraph > on everyone's screen and decide what's best -- it's out of your > control. > > > Modern DTP programs like InDesign currently make visual corrections to > the line breaks in a paragraph automatically, so my suggestion here is > to simply leave it alone, and let the browser's own line-wrapping > mechanisms decide where to wrap. Over time, as browsers improve, it's > my guess that they will handle line-wrapping, orphans, widows, etc, > much like InDesign does, but until then, your <br />'s are definitely > doing more harm than good. > > > --- > Justin French > http://indent.com.au > ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
