Why have blank margins on the pages?

[Stephen Tashi]

I'm curious why the forum pages have blank margins.

I don't know about how browsers and the basic web page arrive at the final display of a page, so I may not appreciate how difficult it would be to get rid of the margins. Being considerably "over 40", I find it difficult to read what I'm typing when I compose a post. It's true I can zoom-in or use a huge monitor etc. But I still begrudge seeing a inch of wasted space on the side of each page and then even more wasted space on the margins of the message composition window.

Apparently it is possible to have web pages without blank margins. I find it interesting that the "old guard" retailers tend to have web pages with blank margins (as if they expect people to print hard copies of the page) and websites like Amazon don't.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I don't know about how browsers and the basic web page arrive at the final display of a page, so I may not appreciate how difficult it would be to get rid of the margins. Being considerably "over 40", I find it difficult to read what I'm typing when I compose a post. It's true I can zoom-in or use a huge monitor etc. But I still begrudge seeing a inch of wasted space on the side of each page and then even more wasted space on the margins of the message composition window.

It's all about your screen resolution. If you have trouble seeing your screen you need to use a lower resolution. Try 1024x768. You won't see any margins then, as that is what PF is set for. Anything higher and you'll see a left and right margin.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Try 1024x768. You won't see any margins then, as that is what PF is set for. Anything higher and you'll see a left and right margin.

Thank you. That works.

- but I still get to complain about the big margins around the message composition window!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Thank you. That works.

- but I still get to complain about the big margins around the message composition window!

That is something I will look at, thanks.

 

[mfb]

You can remove the margins yourself if you like.

This should work in Firefox (with Stylish):

@-moz-document domain("physicsforums.com") {
 .page {
    width: 99% !important;
 }
}

It does not change the size of the reply box, but that can be adjusted manually (once per post).

I guess other browsers have similar features.