Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Widescreen laptops are dumb

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 173 posts

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#141

Post by toomanybeersies »

Zak wrote: post #106
toomanybeersies wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Are you using an IDE that has sidebars or other elements on the screen than code? In my setup with Emacs, a 1600x1200 screen and 12px monospaced font, I have two 86 character wide windows side by side. To add another column without changing something else, I would need a 2400px wide screen. I wouldn't object to a large 2:1 aspect screen on my desktop, but it makes for an unwieldy shape for a laptop.

I meant the inverse, our lines are so long that I need a widescreen monitor.

I'm not at work right now, but from memory I get around 120 characters in each column without any sidebars.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#142

Post by trumped »

Maybe it's just me, but I don't like glossy computer screens either... I'd rather use matte. It seems like matte screens make a bit of a comeback but it was hard to find one years ago.

I once heard a rumor that they were doing widescreens because they were cheaper to manufacture... not sure how true that is...

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#143

Post by mark-r »

tom_ wrote: post #133
wlll wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two 27" Apple monitors, one in portrait and one in landscape orientation. The portrait orientation monitor I use for code. They look identical, there is no degradation (that I can see) from looking at the monitor rotated 90°. If anyone is interested, I use the VESA mount conversion kit from Apple and have the monitors mounted on the Amazon Basics monitor arms, which I highly recommend.

I like portrait mode too, so much in fact that I've got 2 x Dell 27" U2715H monitors (2560x1440 eIPS) set up that way. I've been using this setup for about 18 months now, and I really rate it. 1440x2560 is a very usable resolution. Very few problems with websites (I had regular minor issues when I had a 1200x1920 screen); tons of lines of code on screen; plenty wide enough for 2 side-by-side columns; I don't find it…

Why are desktop screens seemingly locked at ~100 DPI? I recently got a Chromebook with 157 DPI and it looks so much better.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#144

Post by mark-r »

klodolph wrote: post #86
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.

You still run into problems with the pixel structure. The RGB components are lined up horizontally, and they become vertical when turned 90 degrees. Any tech that takes advantage of the layout, such as Microsoft's Cleartype, will fail miserably on a rotated display. I suppose that's why Apple thought it was so important to go to high DPI displays on the iPhone and iPad.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#145

Post by mark-r »

octorian wrote: post #126
derekp7 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade-off is that now we have more vertical pixels than ever before (4k monitors). It just comes with extra bonus pixels on the sides too. What I do is have a code window on one side, and a documentation window on the other.

Yeah, now. Thanks to Apple's start of the high DPI push and 4k/5k displays. For a long time, we suffered from what I'll call "The Great Laptop Display Regression of 2008". For many years, you simply could NOT buy a non-Apple laptop with more than 1080 pixels in the vertical direction. It didn't matter how big of a screen you got, and it didn't matter how much you were willing to pay for it. No one dared even give you…

For a while it was nearly impossible to find a reasonably priced laptop with anything other than 1366x768.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#146

Post by DonHopkins »

kalleboo wrote: post #105
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 was great for having multiple pages/windows open until the recent trend of apps going from having multiple windows to one window (ushered on by Windows (people people have been fullscreening since day one), webapps (where windowing isn't well-supported) and mobile/tablet-centric design). I really despise how the Xcode team thinks that iTunes was a good inspiration for a UI.

True, but it's worse and goes much deeper than that: the iTunes team thinks that QuickTime was a good inspiration for a UI.

The Interface Hall of Shame: QuickTime 4.0 Player

http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm

Apple's long romance with skeuomorphism peaked with Bob Bishop's APPLE-VISION, and went downhill from there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiWE-aO-cyU

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#147

Post by SllX »

lmm wrote: post #58
fphhotchips wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just saying "if you make the screen bigger, you get more space"?

Indeed. Better argument: for a fixed diagonal, you get the most space by having a square screen.

Plus potentially a bigger keyboard with more rows. If Apple had done that with the new MBPs they could have had room for both full-size function keys and the Touchbar. C'est la vie.

Edit: after posting I realized something was missing. I meant had they done this and increased the diagonal to say, 17 or more inches.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#148

Post by sfink »

Sidebars! If you take a day to get used to the using a sidebar for browser tabs, you'll never go back. I prefer Tree-Style Tabs on Firefox, but it's far from the only option.

Then again... even with that, I guess I agree with the OP. Even after turning on the sidebar, there's more horizontal space than I need. And I love screen real estate.

I long ago got used to black bars, and don't watch that much video on my laptop anyway. Usually when I do, I'm connected to an external monitor.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#149

Post by dboreham »

wingerlang wrote: post #24
samcat116 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Always showing?

Yes, always showing, due to decades of Microsoft bugs with their toolbar which would inevitably get stuck showing but masking the underlying window or stuck hidden.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#150

Post by mark-r »

bsharitt wrote: post #34

I find 4:3 too square for both tablets and laptops as it seriously detracts from watching widescreen video content such as nearly all newer movies and TV shows, but 16:9 does have seem a bit too wide compared to height, especially on tablets when you try to use it in portrait mode and it seems ridiculously tall. I've found 16:10 to be a better than 16:9, and while I haven't had a 3:2 laptop, the 3:2 Nook HD+ from a f…

I love the Nook HD+ too. The article points out a few other examples of 3:2 displays.
Post reply on HN