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Widescreen laptops are dumb

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Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#151

Post by mark-r »

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…

Every time I consider upgrading my home desktop monitor, I consider how difficult and/or expensive it will be to replicate its 16:10 aspect ratio. That immediately cures me of the upgrade fever.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#152

Post by marssaxman »

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.

Oh is that why mobile design seems to have taken over so much! I keep running into sites with uselessly gigantic fonts and big square buttons, and I assumed it was either laziness and an assumption that everyone is browsing on a phone, or just another inexplicable designer fad. Do people really just not use portrait-mode windows?

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#153

Post by c22 »

makecheck wrote: post #85

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…

I find if I don't fullscreen my video and disable auxiliary monitors then I won't end up even watching the video at all in which case I may as well turn it off.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#154

Post by [deleted] »

rsync wrote: post #125
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…

"It's difficult to buy a square desktop monitor these days too." Actually, it's quite simple - here is a 27" 1920x1920 square monitor you can buy on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/FlexScan-EV2730QFX-Monitor-1920x1920-... I have one and I think it's great. I actually prefer splitting a 16x10 monitor into two halves, but the perfectly square monitor is great for diagnostics/monitoring where I can split it into four equ…

[deleted]

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#155

Post by mark-r »

pfooti wrote: post #36

Why do people say 16:10 when they could say 8:5? (Or worse, 19.5:9 over 39:18?) this one of those human things? Do you just really like numbers close to 9?

You could dodge the whole thing by using a single real number. 16:10 is 1.6, 16:9 is 1.77, 3:2 is 1.5, and 4:3 is 1.33.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#156

Post by mark-r »

rhacker wrote: post #69

This kind of debate has been going on forever and it will continue as formats for random purposes are invented at random times in history. There is no next better aspect ratio or pixel density that we should move to so we do our best. If we suddenly switch who is to say the next big unknown thing suddenly makes 14:10 the best ratio for the next 10 years?

Funny you should say 14:10, that's almost the aspect ratio used in Europe for paper sizes. It's based on the square root of 2 so that cutting a sheet in half results in two new sheets with the same aspect ratio.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#157

Post by pfooti »

babygoat wrote: post #45
pfooti wrote: post #36

Why do people say 16:10 when they could say 8:5? (Or worse, 19.5:9 over 39:18?) this one of those human things? Do you just really like numbers close to 9?

Because 16:9 is a reference point that everyone is familiar with, and 16:10 is easier to understand in relation to that for most people than 8:5.

In that case, why not say 13.5:9 instead of 3:2? Or 14.4:9 instead of 16:10? People confuse me.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#158

Post by scarface74 »

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…

This.

I still have what I believe is one of the last great laptops with a 1920x1200 display. It's a 15 inch Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Dell with gigabit Ethernet from around 2008-2009. It's not my primary driver. It's used as a Plex Server running Windows 10.

I'll occasionally use it for browsing when I am working from home using my work laptop on the VPN.

I usually have a two monitor setup, but my next personal computer will be a 27 inch 5K iMac. I want to be able to use one monitor with an IDE on one half and the browser on the other half.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#159

Post by jamesgeck0 »

dawnerd wrote: post #98
mkhalil wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah that’s been on the back burner for a while. It’s using an extremely old version and frankly I forgot about it until you mentioned. :/ We’re using the latest version on http://leanin.org

That website also snaps into a mobile-optimized design at 960px width.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#160

Post by kalleboo »

DonHopkins wrote: post #146
kalleboo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh god all these bad memories coming back. I remember sticking with MoviePlayer 2.5 for many many years. And to think I even stuck with QuickTime Player 7 pretty much until this year because that was still better than the new version.

What is it about media player software in particular where everyone from the beginning had to have weird skeuomorphic UIs? Even the early examples I can think of (AppleCD Player, Creative's Windows 3.1 stuff, Winamp) all had to have non-native UIs. Preferably with a fake segmented VFD/LED display https://panic.com/extras/audionstory/popup-images/popup-appl... http://i.imgur.com/27tgh8S.png

edit: that Apple Vision demo is gorgeous! (hah)

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