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Widescreen laptops are dumb

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Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#81

Post by jseliger »

psychometry wrote: post #60
cup-of-tea wrote: post #31

I don't know why this article is only about laptops. It's difficult to buy a square desktop monitor these days too. I've been complaining about it for years. Widescreen is a terrible shape for code. I don't need more horizontal space, I need more lines. What am I going to use horizontal space for? People say turn the monitor vertical but that's horrible too. The screen is designed to be viewed at a certain angle for…

I have a 27" Apple monitor at work and it comfortably supports 3-4 columns of text in Sublime. I'd much rather be able to have an extra column available rather than an extra 100 lines in a 1-2 column layout.

Do you (or does anyone) know if Textmate has a feature to automatically wrap text from one column to another? I've looked for one and not found it. I know emacs will, albeit with typical difficulty, but I just can't go that far.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#82

Post by toomanybeersies »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #31

I don't know why this article is only about laptops. It's difficult to buy a square desktop monitor these days too. I've been complaining about it for years. Widescreen is a terrible shape for code. I don't need more horizontal space, I need more lines. What am I going to use horizontal space for? People say turn the monitor vertical but that's horrible too. The screen is designed to be viewed at a certain angle for…

At work, my widescreen monitor is perfect for showing two columns of code on the screen.

That may be a reflection on the cleanliness of our codebase though...

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#83

Post by tbyehl »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #31

I don't know why this article is only about laptops. It's difficult to buy a square desktop monitor these days too. I've been complaining about it for years. Widescreen is a terrible shape for code. I don't need more horizontal space, I need more lines. What am I going to use horizontal space for? People say turn the monitor vertical but that's horrible too. The screen is designed to be viewed at a certain angle for…

For me, desktop 21:9 displays have been a good substitute -- divide the screen down the middle and it's comparable in feel to having side-by-side 4:3 displays.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#84

Post by dawnerd »

cpburns2009 wrote: post #62
strmpnk wrote: post #15

The big problem I have started seeing is web design assuming you always browse using a maximized window. Combine this with a prevalent market of wide screens and most sites won’t look right without at least 1200px. So once you put anything like a toolbar or inspector on this side, you have a problem. Designers of many sites I have to use daily seem to assume I’d never want to see two windows at once, let alone rearra…

Another problem is the default styles for Bootstrap (which is very convenient for those of us who aren't graphic designers). If you resize or snap your windows to be half-width, they'll be relegated to the mobile styles. Bootstrap does this when the view width is at 960px or less which is exactly half of a 1080 screen (1920px). So even if your windows had no borders, you'll still end up with the mobile styles.

We ended up building our own framework to solve for that with a simple tank confit if we need to change the breakpoints. Bootstrap was just too big yet too limiting for all of our client work. We don’t force the mobile menu either.

https://github.com/firstandthird/clientkit

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#85

Post by makecheck »

It’s amazing how much more useful hardware could be if software were properly designed and flexible.

I don’t know why screens still care about optimizing video...I can’t remember the last time I watched something full screen when there’s picture-in-picture. As with other software, I want to do multiple things and not necessarily just sit and watch something.

For decades software has had a weird laziness when it comes to making things simply resizable. Ever seen a program pop up a list of 1000 choices that only shows about 4 of them, truncating half the names, with a useless miniature scrollbar and no ability to resize, on a gigantic screen?

The day I got the iPad 1, it was the coolest thing ever. It took just weeks for that to be gradually ruined by ridiculous decisions made in software (web sites that could no longer be pinch-zoomed trying to “help” me with a “mobile-optimized” interface, apps lazily zooming up from phone sizes and making terrible use of space, etc.). To this day I would never opt into a “pro” version of that experience; I simply can’t stand software that constantly wants to tell me how much space I have been rationed for each thing.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#86

Post by klodolph »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #31

I don't know why this article is only about laptops. It's difficult to buy a square desktop monitor these days too. I've been complaining about it for years. Widescreen is a terrible shape for code. I don't need more horizontal space, I need more lines. What am I going to use horizontal space for? People say turn the monitor vertical but that's horrible too. The screen is designed to be viewed at a certain angle for…

The “certain angle” applies mostly to TN monitors. VA monitors are much better at this, and IPS monitors can be viewed from almost any angly (the specs say 178° or something like that). IPS monitors are often more expensive, but I’m willing to pay.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#87

Post by seanalltogether »

dboreham wrote: post #2

Pro tip: put the toolbar on the left side of the screen rather than the the bottom location.

Do others do this? I've always found the right side to be the better alternative since the bottom and right sides would be the natural "ends" of the screen.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#88

Post by mxwsn »

My favorite laptop that I've ever owned was an unusual 21:9 ultrabook about 5 years ago [0]. The author does acknowledge in the second to last paragraph that ultra widescreen can be helpful, and boy was it. I could fit my terminal side by side with my text editor split into two 80-char tabs, or fit my terminal, text editor, and chrome all together. It was the closest thing to having dual monitors on a laptop without having too strange or annoying of a shape.

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062470/toshiba-21-9-ultra...

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#89

Post by mkhalil »

dawnerd wrote: post #84
cpburns2009 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another problem is the default styles for Bootstrap (which is very convenient for those of us who aren't graphic designers). If you resize or snap your windows to be half-width, they'll be relegated to the mobile styles. Bootstrap does this when the view width is at 960px or less which is exactly half of a 1080 screen (1920px). So even if your windows had no borders, you'll still end up with the mobile styles.

We ended up building our own framework to solve for that with a simple tank confit if we need to change the breakpoints. Bootstrap was just too big yet too limiting for all of our client work. We don’t force the mobile menu either. https://github.com/firstandthird/clientkit

You might want to look at your website before trying to get the word out about your UI framework:

This is how http://clientkit.io/ looks for me:

https://i.imgur.com/H3wYjba.png

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#90

Post by DonHopkins »

flixic wrote: post #65
kodablah wrote: post #56

> Lateral space is simply not as valuable as vertical space in desktop apps or on the web. This is not the fault of the hardware, it's the fault of the software. I want more screen space, and I'm not asking for a square laptop and I'm not wanting my screen any taller than it is. Browsers should optimize for vertical space and let you reuse your horizontal space. Tree-style or vertical tabs are perfect for this. But f…

> Lateral space is simply not as valuable as vertical space in desktop apps or on the web. This easily boils down to the fact that our language is horizontal, and we don't read rotated text very well. It informs design decisions, creating horizontal tab bars, menu bars, navigations, etc.

Or in some common cases it fails to inform the design of tab bars and other user interfaces, since you can stack many more tabs along the left and right edges than along the top or bottom edges, and you can allocate enough room to distinguish their labels.

Emacs with tabbed windows:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/HyperTIESAuth...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU

It sucks that "standard" tabs are always along the top edge: you can only fit a few of them, and their labels are clipped so you can't distinguish them, and you can't do anything about that. You should be able to move them to any edge and adjust them according to the task, tab count, label size, screen dimensions, and personal preferences.

Ideally, users should be able to choose which edge and how far along each edge to place the tab, adjust the tab's size and rotate its orientation, iconify and expand windows to and from their tabs, and easily group windows together by their tabs in rows or columns as desired (including docking inside other windows, or nesting tabs in 2D tree outlines using different edges and orientations at each level).

"Direct Manipulation" PostScript stack editing with tabbed windows:

http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97

Dragging tabs between different window edges:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4

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