Forum Layout Question

this might be a rant against all forums. or a general principle of web design.

i notice when i read threads all the text is on the right half of the screen. why didnt boards get laid out in such a way that it is in the middle of the screen?

you could put the site menu bar on the right side. or the avatar area on the right side, and that would put the text in the middle.

anyone have any philisophical ideas? or is it just habit now?

My opinions:

I guess the answer would be a question:, how do you read a book? ... left to right is probably the most common answer, unless you were brought up in some Asian or Middle East countries that read from right to left or top to bottom.

Since the left side of the screen is always the first thing people tend to look when they read, it is logical to commonly put the menu items and navigational aspects on the left. It's what people are used to.

I tried putting menu items on the right side of the page once, and it kinda disoriented most users, because they were used to left navigation. It also happened when I decided to put the menu and navigation elements on both the left and right sides of the page. Eventually, people always ask for the standard "menu on left, content on right" to be brought back.

Lastly, with the varying resolutions on different monitors, it is always easier to make the left side fixed, because it is the right side that always "extends" and adjusts itself to accomodate the change in resolution. So if you can make your navigation elements fixed, the content will just adjust its own layout depending on the viewer's resolution.