Public Service Announcement: Avoiding Horizontal Scrolling
An extra-wide post results in the need for horizontal scrolling when reading a journal, and also when someone reads a "friends list" with that wide entry. There are only a couple things that result in horizontal scrolling and prevention is rather easy in both cases.
1. The super-long-URL
When a URL is entered into LJ, LJ merrily makes it a clickable link, if it includes the http:// in it. This is convenient, as far as it goes. If the URL is very long, whether clickable or not, it makes the page wide. Not everyone browses at super-high resolution with the browser at full-screen, so just because "It doesn't horizontal scroll for me" doesn't mean others see the same thing.
Instead of just pasting the URL such as (the admittedly short):
http://www.example.com/
It can be set up as nicely (short!) titled link, like this:
link title
Note that the link title can have spaces in it, which means it can wrap rather than widen the page.
2. The big picture
A large graphic can have the same effect. This could be from some on-line quiz or something more direct. The best thing for this, generally, is to put the image behind a cut:
[Image or quiz result goes here]
This has another benefit in the case of quiz results. Slow loading results won't slow the whole page from loading - only when someone looks behind the cut will that slow things, and that's a bit more expected.
"But it's my journal and I'll post what I please!"
That's right. But don't be surprised if some stop reading your journal if it causes them problems.
There is a way to mitigate even this problem if it's just large images, at least on your own friends page, but it's imperfect. Go to your LiveJournal Edit Info page and find the Use image placeholders on your friends page option and enable it. Also select the size of the image to trigger on. Now even if someone is being thoughtless about large images, it won't cause horizontal scrolling on your friends page. The imperfection is that if someone doesn't specify the height and width of the image, it will be assumed to be too big even if it is tiny.