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Widescreen laptops are dumb

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Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#51

Post by chisleu »

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…

Everyone on the teams at my last 3 jobs has preferred a single large 4k display to alternatives. The ability to have 3-4 columns of code, as well as more lines of code per column, has been invaluable for productivity.

It is very often that I find myself debugging or reading code for the first time and need to dive into several layers of code. Having it all side by side helps tremendously.

YMMV

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#54

Post by cimmanom »

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?

I do this - and yes, always showing. Makes for better ergonomics when you can aim your mouse trajectory at exactly where you need to be instead of mousing over, waiting for the dock to appear, and then mousing to the specific icon you want.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#55

Post by masklinn »

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?

Not GP, but no, I have the dock on the left, hidden and non-zooming.

Then again my use of the dock is sporadic, mostly for accessing recent downloads.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#56

Post by kodablah »

> 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 for some reason, all browser vendors follow each other, don't build alternative options (or count on the community to do it if they even allow that), and presume they have got it right with tabs on the top. It's like browsers have become so hard to build and maintain by the big four that having more than one way to view things is disallowed or relegated to extensions. I've said it before, I want my browser like my IDE. I want to move and dock windows in a MDI, and I want to move around the web like a power user. Yet we're all subject to the lowest common denominator of users because, I suppose, maintaining more than one UI paradigm is too difficult and they've all settled on the best apparently.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#57

Post by petecox »

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 .

Ubuntu's Unity had the dock on the side - I believe inspired by the unusual 1024x600 screen on the Eee PC.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#58

Post by lmm »

fphhotchips wrote: post #22
wffurr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take the same width of screen, e.g. 1920 pixels and make it taller, say, 1440 pixels, then you have the same horizontal space and all of those windows are taller with more content in them!

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.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#59

Post by always_good »

chisleu wrote: post #51
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…

Everyone on the teams at my last 3 jobs has preferred a single large 4k display to alternatives. The ability to have 3-4 columns of code, as well as more lines of code per column, has been invaluable for productivity. It is very often that I find myself debugging or reading code for the first time and need to dive into several layers of code. Having it all side by side helps tremendously. YMMV

The other nice thing about a single, large monitor is that it maps to the same workflow / muscle memory you'd use on your laptop.

Switching between a laptop and multi-monitor setup was a bit comical for me despite trying it for a month. Even something as simple as alt-tab focusing a window that's not on the expected screen would slow me down.

It wasn't for me. And my productivity improved once I moved back to a single 26in monitor.

Re: Widescreen laptops are dumb

#60

Post by psychometry »

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.
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