Ask HN: (Solved!) Using CSS to make HN comments only 8 to 10 words wide?
6 comments
Combine these two google searches:
- "ch width css", e.g: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/css-unit-guide/#:~:text=Th....
- "average length of English word", e.g: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-word-length-in-t....
So:
- 8 to 10 words, call it 9
- average word length: call it 5
- 5 * 9 = 45 word characters
- 9 words that's 8 space characters
- 45 + 8 that's 53 monospace characters
- in monospace all characters should have 1ch width (width of 0-character), so
- css as follows:
- "ch width css", e.g: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/css-unit-guide/#:~:text=Th....
- "average length of English word", e.g: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-word-length-in-t....
So:
- 8 to 10 words, call it 9
- average word length: call it 5
- 5 * 9 = 45 word characters
- 9 words that's 8 space characters
- 45 + 8 that's 53 monospace characters
- in monospace all characters should have 1ch width (width of 0-character), so
- css as follows:
:root, * {
font-family: monospace !important;
}
.whatever-comment-class-is, p {
max-width: 53ch;
word-break: break-all;
overflow: hidden;
}Thank you! I used ublock origin to add this which seems to work well for my tastes:
Note: ublock origin needs to be enabled for these rules to take effect.
news.ycombinator.com##.comment:style(max-width: 60ch !important; overflow: hidden !important;)
news.ycombinator.com##.comhead:style(background: #e6e6df; font-weight: italic; color: #686868 !important;)
news.ycombinator.com##.hnuser:style(background: #e6e6df; font-style: italic; color: #575757 !important;)Note: ublock origin needs to be enabled for these rules to take effect.
Install User CSS extension if you are using Chrome or Brave browser. Use the following code:
.comment { max-width: 65ch; }
.comment { max-width: 65ch; }
I've been told that the comment text in my example is confusing to non-English speakers. I'll edit it and keep that in mind in the future.
Something like this:
The optimum width of a paragraph is 50 to 80 characters with some disagreement on the max width. Which is about 8 to 10 words, or 30 to 50 em according to this question on stackoverflow: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-best-number-of-paragraph-width-for-readability
Is it possible to style HN like that?