I guess it depends on the person. I'm happy to accept that I'm strange, but I'd much rather read lines that mostly fill my screen with normal margins on each side than short lines in a long narrow column surrounded by an ocean of empty whitespace.
I can't be the only one who feels this way. I have yet to buy a book where 90% of each page is blank and there's just a tiny column of words down the middle of the page.
I hold books much closer to my face making it much larger in my field of vision than my monitor ever gets. Maybe there are people who have to physically turn their head from side to side in order to see the edges of their screens, but I'm guessing that's not terribly common and the amount of effort involved in sweeping your eyes across a page in a book is pretty similar to moving them across a screen
You're not the only one. I was also comparing this new design with what you get in books, I'd hate to have lots of blank space in a book (no matter the width of said book).
Thanks for the reply. I guess I am also strange, but I share your perspective.
At the very least, I feel like responsive options to toggle some of the various max-width CSS settings as an opt-in feature is worthwhile at least for reading-heavy sites like getpocket.com and news websites. I end up toggling these in Firefox / Chrome debugger and wish I could install extensions to apply custom code automatically but my employer does not allow this.
I can't be the only one who feels this way. I have yet to buy a book where 90% of each page is blank and there's just a tiny column of words down the middle of the page.