It is both a prison of constricting limitations (you can’t use any font you like unless you stick to graphics and then they bump page loads, aren’t as easily indexable/searchable et al), and a plain of enlightened freedom (you don’t need to WORRY about getting those line-breaks perfect, or manually styling every aspect once you’ve built your (tedious) stylesheets, you’re not locked to the physical dimensions of sheets of paper and so on.

When print designers first move to the web they fall into the ‘guilty party’ list in terms of forcing browser windows to a specific size, forcing smaller font sizes, trying to use odd formats for layout – basically fighting AGAINST the technology that they see trying to remove their absolute design control.

After a while they see how liberating it can be to let go of that obsessive need for control and work WITH the technology. Using CSS to give them the intricate control they desire without restricting their users to a specific window size. They see how the user should be able to look at a page in the way that suits them best for their device, OS, browser, graphics card.

One of the issues I have with some websites is that they use small fonts because the site is designed with ONLY Windows users in mind, so when viewing on a Mac with it’s inherently higher default resolutions, the same number of pixels takes up a smaller space.

What I try to do these days is avoid px measurements in my CSS and revert to print-terms such as ems, picas and points – which look great in relation to each other and will display much more consistently. Plus they’re easier to visualise from a print designer’s perspective without having to continually check the effects of changes to a stylesheet. For instance you KNOW what 11 on 16pt Verdana is going to look like with 0.5 pica paragraph padding.

(Sorry for the double post.)

Still, one of the reasons I chose to display entire posts is that many people, or at least those I’ve talked to, prefer it that way. For all the pseudo-science and theory we can try to apply to design, it still comes down to the seemingly arbitrary preferences of the user.

Oh, and I think I’ll add Griffin and Hoxie to my list of places to visit for inspiration.

I agree with you about white screens. There’s some controversy about what is more readable (see On the readability of inverted color schemes, for example). The problem is that most designers don’t know how to do white on black properly, or they use other, less readable, colors on a black background.

Daring Fireball doesn’t use a black background. It works because the background color is softer and easier on the eyes, and there’s ample line-height (1.8em).

@Javier: That’s an interesting idea, but I’m not a fan of liquid layouts. Liquid layouts change the length of the line, which can affect readability, and they break easily. Your example works as well as it does because there are no images and it creates additional columns as the width increases, but still, I think it’s a bit of a gimmick. :)

In my case, I went with full posts because much of my audience are skimmers; they won’t go father than the home page until I’ve already proven to be a good read. I may yet change that format, but for now, I think it works well.

I’d also like to speak up on behalf of light-on-dark websites. Yes, like so many other things, it can be done poorly – maybe it often is. However, a white screen isn’t necessarily easy on the eyes, either. After a while, it can feel like looking into the sun.

In fact, one of my favorite site designs happens to be guilty on both counts: the famous Daring Fireball.

(Control-Option-Command-8 is also great for April Fools Day)