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Not only that, but many websites tend to have very large left and right margins. One would expect that by reducing the width of the browser window the margins would be adjusted but instead the website either "won't fit" in the resized window requiring you to scroll horizontally or will reduce the width of the central column.

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That's people doing margins wrong. They see a CSS property called 'margin' and go for that, which ends up only working well for displays and window sizes comparable to their own. What they should be using 'margin' for is to specify the minimum outer padding and combine it with 'max-width' to allow the browser to apply flexible margins appropriate for whatever window size the reader actually has.

My preferred styling is for a modest padding (2-4 em), auto margins, an auto width, with a max defined width of ~30 - 45 em units.

See: https://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB

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