WebKit now supports the text-wrap: pretty CSS property, improving typography for justified text. This property optimizes word spacing and hyphenation to produce more visually appealing and readable justified text, addressing issues like excessive whitespace or too many hyphenated lines. text-wrap: pretty aims to prioritize aesthetics and comprehension by intelligently balancing these typographic elements, leading to a more refined and professional look for justified text on the web. It provides a simple way for developers to enhance the appearance of justified text blocks without resorting to complex manual adjustments or JavaScript workarounds.
The WebKit blog post entitled "Better Typography with text-wrap: pretty" elucidates advancements in text wrapping within the WebKit rendering engine, aiming to elevate typographic aesthetics and enhance readability on the web. Traditionally, web browsers have employed a simplistic approach to line breaking, primarily considering spaces and hyphens as viable breaking points. This rudimentary method often results in visually jarring disparities in line lengths, particularly noticeable in narrow columns or when using justified text alignment. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as "rags" or "uneven text flow," detracts from the overall reading experience.
The introduction of the text-wrap: pretty property addresses this issue by enabling the browser to utilize more sophisticated line-breaking algorithms. These algorithms consider a wider range of factors, such as the distribution of whitespace within a line and the overall visual balance of the paragraph, to determine optimal breaking points. This more nuanced approach results in a more aesthetically pleasing and balanced text flow, minimizing the stark variations in line lengths and producing a visually harmonious presentation. Furthermore, the blog post highlights that text-wrap: pretty aims to improve the balance between minimizing the number of lines (compactness) and achieving even line lengths (balance). It attempts to distribute lines more evenly without significantly increasing the total number of lines required.
The post details how WebKit now supports several advanced typographic features enabled by text-wrap: pretty. These include micro-typography techniques like character-level kerning adjustments, which finely tune the spacing between individual characters to enhance readability and visual appeal. Additionally, text-wrap: pretty unlocks support for hyphenation in justified text, further refining the distribution of text within lines and reducing the occurrence of excessive whitespace. This contributes to a more consistent and polished appearance, especially in languages with long words or complex orthography. The blog post emphasizes that these enhancements are designed to seamlessly integrate with existing web standards, allowing web developers to leverage these features without requiring extensive modifications to their existing codebases. By adopting text-wrap: pretty, developers can significantly enhance the typographic quality of their web content, ultimately leading to a more enjoyable and engaging reading experience for users.
Summary of Comments ( 137 )
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43622703
Hacker News users generally praised the new
text-wrap: prettyCSS property for addressing a long-standing typography issue with justified text. Several commenters pointed out the benefits for accessibility, particularly for users with dyslexia or other cognitive differences, as the more consistent spacing makes text easier to parse. Some expressed concern about potential performance implications, especially with large blocks of text, but others downplayed these concerns given modern browser optimizations. A few users wished for further refinements, like hyphenation control or integration with existing text justification methods, but overall the sentiment was positive, viewing the feature as a significant improvement for web typography. The discussion also touched upon the subtle differences betweentext-wrap: prettyandtext-justify: distribute, with some clarifying the distinct functionalities and advantages of each.The Hacker News post "Better typography with text-wrap: pretty" generated several comments discussing the new CSS property
text-wrap: pretty. Many commenters express enthusiasm for the feature, viewing it as a significant improvement for web typography.Several commenters highlight the practical benefits of
text-wrap: pretty, especially for East Asian languages. They point out how it intelligently handles word breaks and spacing, creating a more visually appealing and readable layout. One commenter specifically mentions the improvement in handling punctuation marks, which often caused awkward line breaks in the past. The enhanced control over widows and orphans, preventing single lines of text at the beginning or end of paragraphs, is also mentioned as a positive aspect.Some comments delve into the technical details of the implementation, discussing how it differs from existing methods of achieving similar results. One commenter mentions the challenges of balancing typographic beauty with performance, and praises the WebKit team for finding a good compromise. Another explains how
text-wrap: prettygoes beyond simply preventing widows and orphans, and also considers other typographic nuances for a more refined appearance.The discussion also touches upon the broader implications of this feature for web design. Some commenters anticipate wider adoption of advanced typographic techniques now that they are easier to implement. Others express hope that this will encourage a greater focus on typography in web development overall.
A few commenters raise questions and concerns. One asks about the potential impact on accessibility, particularly for users with dyslexia. Another wonders about browser compatibility and the timeline for wider adoption.
Overall, the comments reflect a positive reception to the
text-wrap: prettyproperty. Commenters see it as a valuable addition to CSS that will improve the quality of web typography, particularly for East Asian languages, by providing a more elegant and refined way to handle text flow and line breaks. While some practical questions remain about implementation and accessibility, the general sentiment is one of excitement and anticipation for its wider adoption.