I had this same discussion on another HN thread a while back. I prefer lines to run as long as possible; I find it difficult/distracting to move my eyes to the beginning of the next line every few seconds. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I have to believe I'm not the only one out there who feels this way.
Rather than having the website author wrap lines at a width that works for the average user or use case (which may only be optimum for a percentage of users or use cases, which may not include me), the user can simply make their browser whatever width they prefer the lines to wrap at. This way, everybody gets to choose what works for them.
I am in the same boat as GP, and I wonder if it's one of the reasons I migrated hard to ebooks and online magazines/newspapers as soon as that became possible and never looked back.
The bad text formatting in printed works (including the bizarre decision to sacrifice useful vertical position cues ("ragged right") to imitate the technique medieval scribes used to reassure their patrons they weren't wasting valuable parchment ("full justification")) is a big reason why I avoid them whenever possible.
I'm in the same boat as kmoser. I don't like narrow text lines either.
In my experience, books are mostly OK, as long as they don't split up the text in columns. Magazines and newspapers often do have columns that are much narrower than I would like.
To some degree, yes. Not to the point that I can't or won't do it, but I would certainly prefer books to be printed much wider. I can mitigate some of the issue by keeping my index finger along the left margin as I read, so I have a better idea of where my eyes need to jump to the next line. That technique is impossible with my computer screen, which is more than arm's length from me.
Part of the issue is that I read fairly quickly, so I find myself spending a relatively large percentage of my time skipping to the next line, and it's that frequent context switching that is annoying.
Making the browser windows narrow is a bad suggestion. Because most websites have some sort of navigation bar on the left and another bar on the right, so we need a wide enough window to get enough of the main text (width).
There are very few websites without those columns.
Surely between the browser window too wide (where the text lines are too long) and the browser window too narrow (where side bars are hidden) there exists a width that is exactly to your liking.
Rather than having the website author wrap lines at a width that works for the average user or use case (which may only be optimum for a percentage of users or use cases, which may not include me), the user can simply make their browser whatever width they prefer the lines to wrap at. This way, everybody gets to choose what works for them.