Widescreen laptops are dumb • Hacker News Board

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#111

Post by ropeadopepope » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

lamename wrote: post #48

Screens are visual, and human vision is biased to search lateral space over vertical space. This is due to the nature of humans' visuospatial limitations. We're largely 2d animals in our movement: front/back & left/right, not so much up down. This is different from animals like birds and fish who constantly have to navigate all 3 dimensions to catch prey and avoid death. We aren't ignorant of vertical space, but hori…

> Of course, this all varies by task, but I imagine this is a big reason why 16:9 came about.

The other one is internal real estate. Wide screens mean wider keyboards and larger batteries.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#112

Post by Zak » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 3:57 PM UTC

jasperry wrote: post #97

efficax wrote: post #25

This is where I mourn the discontinuation of the Chromebook Pixel with it's glorious 3:2 high res display. A moment of silence please

Samsung's Chromebook Plus has a 3:2 2400x1600 display, and it scales flawlessly.

My mother bought one of these on my advice. It is, indeed a very nice screen. When can I have one on a Thinkpad?

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#113

Post by cup-of-tea » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

slantyyz wrote: post #93

cup-of-tea wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's 180 lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text.

>> It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's 180 lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text. And it's 320 less lines horizontally. What matters to you may not matter to the next person, because their use case is different from yours. No matter what laptop (and monitor) manufacturers do with respect to aspect ratio, they're never going to please everyone wi…

Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who don't want widescreen.

This is hacker news. Surely here we can complain that they're not made for programming. I also do a lot of writing and extra width is utterly useless for that.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#114

Post by cimmanom » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

bsharitt wrote: post #95

cimmanom wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but a lot of us use our laptops for tasks besides watching video.

Uh, yes that was indeed the point of my comment, thank you for restating that. If video was the only important thing, 16:9 across the board would be important. But going the other way to 4:3 is a vast over correction as it would make the screen nearly useless for video.

Maybe not all laptops should be 4:3, but that doesn't mean none should be.

Many of us never use our laptops (especially employer-owned ones) for full-screen video, or have no objection to the letterboxing and slightly smaller video size when we do.

"Nearly useless" seems like a ridiculous exaggeration to me. I have an iPad (4:3) used for little other than video, and love it.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#115

Post by ropeadopepope » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 3:59 PM UTC

Zak wrote: post #94

lamename wrote: post #48

Screens are visual, and human vision is biased to search lateral space over vertical space. This is due to the nature of humans' visuospatial limitations. We're largely 2d animals in our movement: front/back & left/right, not so much up down. This is different from animals like birds and fish who constantly have to navigate all 3 dimensions to catch prey and avoid death. We aren't ignorant of vertical space, but hori…

When reading text, I believe the opposite to be true. It's why newspapers use relatively narrow columns of text despite having a lot of width to work with. It's much easier to keep my place and process information if I don't have to move my eyes much horizontally. When it comes to scanning for unexpected information, you may be right. A high aspect ratio might be better suited for gaming, at least with games where a…

The problem with both yours and the parent's assertion is context. Newspapers are easy to move so the portion you're reading is in your field of view. Your monitor isn't and it's used for much more than just reading static text. 1.5:1 may be a good reading aspect ratio, but if you need multiple things with that aspect ratio open and on the screen at the same time then you need a wider screen.

edit: I just realized a 3:2 screen is basically two 1.5:1 "areas". There are some laptops that have a 3:2 screen mentioned in other places in this thread.

I do wish I had a better way of splitting content into readable newspaper style columns, though. Modern web design is pretty antagonistic toward this end. There was a MacOS app that used to do this[0], but it hasn't been updated in years and there isn't an alternative for windows.

[0]: http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#116

Post by pmarreck » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

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…

> Widescreen is a terrible shape for code.

I beg to differ. I have a UWQHD and love it for code. I can have 2 sets of code side by side (or a terminal) AND docs AND the website I'm working on, all visible without moving windows. Possibly also messaging apps.

I cannot fathom how someone wouldn't be able to appreciate working on a UWQHD monitor.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#117

Post by WorldMaker » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #101

zeveb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big problem I have started seeing is web design assuming you always browse using a maximized window. That's been a problem for roughly twenty years now. Way back in the 1990s (on a 4:3 CRT, natch) I started out with half the screen dedicated to my browser and the other half left free for other things (back in those days it was normal to have many windows open at once on a Mac screen — weird how we have so many…

It was a Windowsism, but I guess these days it's a smartphone/tabletism

It's funny too because these days in Windows it's so easy to tile to halves or quadrants (the semi-maximized "snap" states and their mouse and keyboard shortcuts), yet macOS seems to have regressed to mostly encouraging only full screen/maximized apps (with most tiling options disappeared from system menus and now seemingly relegated to third party tools) and so many web developers seem to be on macOS these days.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#118

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

samcat116 wrote: post #9

dboreham wrote: post #2

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

I have the dock on the left of all of my Macs .

First thing I do is pin it to the top right, the way it should be https://guidebookgallery.org/pics/gui/desktop/firstrun/opens...

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#119

Post by carussell » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

spystath wrote: post #21

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…

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.

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.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#120

Post by octorian » Thu, Apr 19, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #30

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…

> The big problem I have started seeing is web design assuming you always browse using a maximized window. That's been a problem for roughly twenty years now. Way back in the 1990s (on a 4:3 CRT, natch) I started out with half the screen dedicated to my browser and the other half left free for other things (back in those days it was normal to have many windows open at once on a Mac screen — weird how we have so many…

I'd actually argue that Windows handles "not maximizing things" better than Mac from a usability perspective.

Sure, the visual treatment of maximized windows felt "more natural" on Windows, but the Mac's #$@&! global menu bar often made moving between multiple non-maximized apps more annoying (especially on a large display).