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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#501

Post by WorldMaker »

robertoandred wrote: post #471
WorldMaker wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has great High DPI support. It's Windows applications that often haven't seen upgrades since before even 2012. Windows' commitment to backward compatibility is the struggle. Windows hasn't had the option to just change processor architectures every dozen years on a seeming whim and subsequently force all software to be rewritten or die.

Mac apps didn't have to be upgraded to work with high dpi.

macOS X was released in 2001 with the "Cocoa" application UI library. While "Carbon" helped older Mac OS applications run for a limited time on OS X, no applications today use any graphics stack older than Cocoa's 2001 release, as the drop of all support for PPC-targeted apps insured that in macOS' switch to x86. (Cocoa had High DPI support baked in from NextStep, even if it took ~11 years to be "needed".)

Win32 was first beta tested by developers in 1992, and has had to remain stable and backwards compatibile to those first early 90s versions. There are still 32-bit apps written in 1992 that are expected to run unmodified on Windows 10 today. The last processor-architecture related API drop that Windows has been allowed by public perception and corporate strategy was Win16 support was dropped on 64-bit processors. (Hence why Windows on ARM has struggled and the current iteration of Windows on ARM now involves a 32-bit x86 emulator as a core feature.)

Mac apps did have to be upgraded, it's just that Apple has been much better at requiring upgrades. There's barely no comparison here. There is no way that you can possibly find today a version of macOS that still supports Mac Classic applications unmodified from the 90s (for instance 94's Glider Pro v1) with High DPI support, yet Windows absolutely must run applications from Windows 95. Sure, Windows sometimes still stumbles in High DPI support for pixel-perfect applications written three decades ago in the 90s, but it at least tries, macOS shrugged and gave up.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#502

Post by the_af »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #451
the_af wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So no, I don't think you can develop using "tiny laptops with poor 1366x768 displays". At least not all kinds of software, and not everyone can. This opinion seems bizarre to me. You start by offering personal (and valid) anecdote, then end up saying "I don't think you can develop [...]". But this flies in the face of evidence. Most people by far do not use your preferred monitor setup (iMac 5K) and in my country a…

I don't think they were doubting that somebody does develop in those random setups, they were disagreeing with the people that say it doesn't matter and you can code anywhere. In your quote, a royal you.

But they are not random setups. They are extremely common setups in my part of the world. People -- who are pretty good at what they do -- can and do develop using these tiny screens. In this regard, "it doesn't matter". Or taking less literally, they wouldn't complain if they got a better monitor, but it's not the primary concern for them. So taking a cue from TFA's title: "no, it's not time to upgrade your monitor".

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#503

Post by JohnBooty »

robertoandred wrote: post #199
JohnBooty wrote: post #77

I found this article utterly baffling. The author clearly knows their stuff, having created Fira Code, but my experiences couldn't be more different. I spend most of my days in a text browser, text editor and text terminal, looking at barely moving letters. So I optimize my setup to showing really, really good letters. I certainly appreciate how nice text looks on a high DPI display. But for coding purposes!? I don't…

Blurry, pixellated text is not a coder's paradise.

I'm in my 40s and my eyes aren't great. But I have zero issues with legibility on the non-high-DPI Dell 38".

Depending on font choice (typically I use Input Mono Compressed) I can fit six or seven 80x100 text windows side-by-side on the Dell with excellent legibility.

That is up to 800 total lines of code and/or terminal output on my screen at once.

That really is my idea of coder's paradise. You, of course, are entitled to your own idea. No two coders like the same thing. Ever.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#504

Post by tln »

Damnit! This article fucked up my setup.

I just went in and fiddled with Display settings and my 4k TV doesn't show 1:1 scaling anymore.

I mean, it's Catalina issue, but still. Tonsky: May your Helvetica always be silently replaced with Arial

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#505

Post by biosed »

_JamesA_ wrote: post #14
biosed wrote: post #8

Using 55" LG OLED @4k as my main display, nothing compares.

Have you experienced any of the reported OLED burn-in issues? I would love to upgrade to an OLED but my screens are on at least 16 hours a day with semi-static content. That's a hefty price to take a chance on burn-in.

Its the C9 and I have all the anti burnin features turned on, I have no issues, you can see the tv moving the whole screen a few pixels every so often.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#507

Post by zrm »

Does anybody make a reasonable 16:10 aspect ratio 4K monitor yet? Because I'd buy it, but I can also stick with 2K forever if nobody wants to shut up and take my money.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#509

Post by t-writescode »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #441
Nullabillity wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess macOS' window management is bad enough that treating it as a pile of paper is the only way to manage.

I don't see how alt-tabbing through maximized windows on macOS is different from Windows and Linux like the OP is suggesting. Though I do keep my browser at half-width on my ultrawide monitor because it's somewhat of an exotic/untested aspect ratio for websites. Also any power user that cares will use a tool like Divvy on macOS for arranging windows with hotkeys.

For one, if you have multiple max-size windows of a single application in Mac OS X, alt-tab doesn't go between those windows. command-tab does.

Alt-tab goes between applications

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#510

Post by tln »

orestis wrote: post #373

Do all that, of course. But when you’re writing applications for other people, go buy a shitty middle of the pack laptop, resolution 1280x768, with the windows start bar and menu bars eating like 150pixels of that, and try to use your software there.

Good call.

I use this https://github.com/mattkersley/Responsive-Design-Testing too, modified with 1366 x 768 as one of the three "key sizes" to design for.

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