Content container too wide? Narrow the width of the container of content pages

[Renato_Carvalho]

I’m migrating my company’s handbook from Notion to Fibery.

One thing that was a bit weird to me was the reading experience in Fibery.

Fact! It’s too wide!

The current width of Fibery’s content container exceeds what research shows is optimal for readability.

Studies in human-computer interaction demonstrate that text containers should ideally maintain between 50-75 characters per line (approximately 600-800px width). When text spans beyond this range, readers experience increased eye fatigue and reduced comprehension.

Well, I don’t know much about studies, however I feel that something is not right (Linked two interesting articles at the end of the post)

I have also made a comparison with the same content in different tools and measured the container widths:

• Fibery: 1008px ← Too wide!
• Notion: 780px ← Much better reading experience
• ClickUp: 717px
• Whimsical: 700px
• Obsidian: 621px

Attaching the visual comparison:

Fibery content width (1008px)

Notion content width (780px)

ClickUp content width (717px)

Whimsical content width (700px)

Obsidian content width (621px)

This isn’t just subjective preference:

• The Baymard Institute found that excessively wide text columns decrease reading speed by up to 30%
• Wide columns significantly reduce information retention
• Other people of our team reports feeling overwhelmed by the text layout
• Eye strain increases as users must track longer distances between line endings and beginnings

This is especially an issue for reading documents, such as Company Handbook, SOPs, etc.

The feature request

Would it be possible to implement a setting to adjust the maximum width of content containers?

Even offering preset width options (narrow, medium, wide), narrow bing the default for documents would dramatically improve the reading experience while maintaining flexibility for different use cases.

This would make Fibery much more effective for documentation and knowledge sharing, which is one of the reasons we chose to migrate from Notion.

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• Readability: The Optimal Line Length
• Size Matters: Balancing Line Length And Font Size In Responsive Web Design

[njyo]

While I concur that narrow text is easy to read, I am a huge fan of tables and embedded diagrams and I struggle with narrow layouts when having those.

So many pages are full width for me.

I’d love to have a nice layout where text is not too wide, but tables (text and embed) and diagram embeds can be wider in a nice manner.

I understand this is NOT an easy problem to solve.

Still, having hope.

[Renato_Carvalho]

In Notion, as well as Fibery, you can make embeds wider, even when if the narrow layout was chosen. Not sure about tables.

[njyo]

Yes, you can do the same in Fibery, but it’s not super elegant. I don’t have a solution, because it’s a tricky problem. Just sharing that it’s worth another consideration.

[grex22]

Agreed that narrow is fine, but don’t force my embedded views or tables to also be narrow too!

[Michael_Ichter]

I agree that text can be narrower while other elements should stay with their current width.

[Renato_Carvalho]

I agree that’s something we need to keep in mind while exploring new solutions to this challenge

[Renato_Carvalho]

Perhaps, the narrow option could have embedded views the same width as they are today by default.

Some blog designs do that. The text container is narrow. But the images and embeds are larger by default.