Thanks for the response.

The SS is just an example of a browser window where the reading area takes up 1/3 of the screen.

I'm not going to quibble with the argument that longer lines are generally harder to read, but I think it is a mistake to assume that this is the same for everyone. People have different definitions of what constitutes a long line, and different zones of comfort - no doubt influenced by what one is used to (I notice this myself every time I get a new monitor configuration). One size doesn't fit all.

IMO, though - having content columns too wide is rarely a problem (assuming the site scales to the browser width) - because one can always reduce browser width. The user can't fix having content that is too narrow, though.

Would it be practical to have the max width be a setting that the administrator can decide in the Config? Would make a bit more sense than forcing the admin to hack it in manually (and potentially having to redo it after each update).

And to reiterate on a point from my original post; from a UI perspective, the inconsistency across the apps looks bad. If the general point of the narrow column in Phriction is readability, then why do comment/answers (such as those on these pages) expand to fill the whole window? The width of the Phriction reading area isn't even consistent with Diviner or Phame, which are the two other reading-heavy applications. It makes the column size look and feel like a very arbitrary and random limit. Better to leave those kind of decisions in the hand of the site admin, IMO.

Would it be useful if I submitted a task for this?