Adobe (www.adobe.com) has proposed a new standard — dubbed “Automatic Text Balancing” — for better web typography.
If browsers adopt text balancing it could mean the end of typographic unsightliness like widows, orphans and ragged lines, and would go a long way to creating more readable text on the web, according to “WebMonkey” (http://tinyurl.com/akm7yvx). Adobe’s proposal is based on InDesign’s “Balance Ragged Lines” feature, and works a bit like justifying text except that instead of expanding text with ugly spaces between words, the algorithm would adjust line lengths to “balance” text for easier reading.