Almost all business applications have horizontal menus and ribbons that take up a decent percentage of a landscape monitor instead of utilising the “spare” screen space on the left or right, and a taskbar usually sits at the bottom or top of the screen eating up even more space (yes I know this can be changed but it’s not the default).
Documents are traditionally printed/read in portrait which is reflected on digital documents.
Programmers often rotate their screens to be portrait in order to see more of the code.
Most web pages rarely seem to make use of horizontal real estate, and scrolling is almost universally vertical. Even phones are utilised in portrait for the vast majority of time, and many web pages are designed for mobile first.
Beyond media consumption and production, it feels like the most commonly used workplace productivity apps are less useful in landscape mode. So why aren’t more office-based computer screens giant squares instead of horizontal rectangles?
It’s easier on your neck to look side to side than it is up and down. So to get more screen real estate it makes more sense to go horizontal. Anecdotally, I constantly have two documents or a document and a web page open next to each other on one monitor. The landscape framing works really well for that.
Modern squarish (16:18) monitors do exist, a friend has one and swears by it. For example, this one isn’t even that expensive given the size, resolution and that it’s bundled with what looks like an excellent monitor arm.
Personally I’m more in the “two windows side by side on a big ass 16:9” camp.
I imagine it has to do with binocular vision. If each eye sees roughly a circle, overlapping roughly makes a landscape rectangle. So perhaps that aspect ratio and orientation just “feels” better?
It sounds like people in your workspace haven’t discovered opening multiple windows side by side.
I’ve found people in the windows world often make everything full screen all the time- such a waste. You have a 40” 6k display and you open a single giant word doc.
You could have 3 or more documents open side by side- or a webpage for reference, a notepad, and your work or 1000 other combinations.
I do development work so my workflow is extremely text heavy, but it’s rare that I don’t have 4+ windows open simultaneously per display. I also use an old dell monitor I had laying around rotated 90 degrees as others mentioned for log monitoring or chat threads.
I think people just need to get more creative using their space- it’s not the monitor’s fault if you don’t fill it with stuff.
I get so triggered by people just using the external screen as a mirror. With wrong aspect ratio and resolution. With maximized windows.
There’s a reason I need tiling shortcuts and an ultrawide screen.
Can’t imagine there are too many traditional offices with 40" 6k screens.
As I say, I think it’s unfair to blame users for “not using the screen properly” when most office software is set up for portrait, while the screens are horizontal. Yes you can use multiple windows (assuming your widescreen display is big enough to allow productive working with two smaller windows), or multiple screens, or rotate them etc, but they feel like workarounds to get around the fact that the applications work naturally in portrait, and most laptop screens for example don’t easily accommodate any of those options. Which is probably why you see more 3:2 laptop displays than standalone monitors.
You took me a little bit too literally- I was illustrating a point. People have comparably giant displays compared to the 90’s and yet still treat them as single small displays.
It’s absolutely fair to blame the users in this situation. Hit the fucking win + left/right arrow and you can have 2 windows per screen without any additional tweaks. You can also drag them by hand until they hit the border if that’s to your liking.
As mentioned, this doesn’t solve the problem of apps not utilising the available space efficiently. “Just open another app” isn’t a solution to “Why doesn’t the app I’m working on appropriately use the available space”.
Because the app you’re working on is using all of the space it requires. It has no need to expand into the unused space.
Web pages and office documents are tall items that already take up as much of the screen as they reasonably can. Perhaps you could move the tool bars to the sides (and many applications do have these options), but users tend to find that cumbersome and that still doesn’t even come close to utilizing that space. Instead they are kept in a format that allows you to comfortably put two documents (or other windows) side by side because that’s FAR FAR more useful than pointlessly expanding the UI.
Except they don’t use the space well do they, as you’ve said. Toolbars, menus, status bars, task bars etc all reside horizontally.
Most widescreen monitors in offices allow you to put two documents next to each other, but still don’t let you see the whole page and remain readable. There’s no question that a taller monitor wouldn’t solve that, because as you’ve said earlier, why not rotate your screen?
I wouldn’t have to if it was taller 😂
Of you press up/down right after left/right the window will be a quarter of the screen instead of half.
On Windows 11, you can also just drag towards the top, and it’ll give you different snapping options.
The market is to optimize for max human eyesight, which is a horizontal aspect ratio. For edge cases, a monitor can be converted to a vertical aspect ratio easily.
There really isn’t a large market to go square. If anything, monitors have gotten wider over time.
Not to mention I only want to go wider.
The immersion for gaming is all I car for, my work laptop is for work and it’s something I hardly use as a mechanic
3:2 and 4:3 used to be fairly common but I think economies of scale made everything 16:9 because of TVs
Fortunately 16:10 is becoming more popular again which does give a bit more vertical space
Yeah. Strange that in general the applications themselves haven’t transitioned with the hardware. Every office desktop seems to have a widescreen, but every office application still has its menus along the top by default, and does little to take advantage of the increased horizontal space.
At work I usually need to have multiple windows up, so no one window spans the width of the display. It’s often nice to have two documents side-by-side instead.
If it’s Windows give Fancy Zones (included in PowerToys) a whirl. Modifiable window snap zones are excellent.
Also altsnap is a great tool for throwing stuff around when not suited to fixed layouts
If you have VESA mounts at your desk just use one in portrait and one in landscape, at least that’s what I do
Exactly what I do too, then had a shower thought about why I had to.
Sideways T gang unite!
Maybe we should come up with a better name before we print the shirts.
LibreOffice has a way to switch to a sidebar UI. I always preferred that, because of what you describe…
It’s also about the lease common denominator a 16:9 screen will show the aspect ratio of a 4:3 but a 4:3 won’t show a 16:9. The whole point of a 16:9 was to fit all common ratios without distortion.
Won’t they both show 16:9 or 4:3 but with black bars either vertically or horizontally?
Yeah but to show a 16:9 on a 4:3 it would be so small you would have more than half your screen taken up by black bars. It’s the whole reason 16:9 was created to also help with the flat and scope film formats. To finally get rid of the awful practice of pan and scan.
That just isn’t true. Viewing 16:9 on 4:3 doesn’t mean half your screen is black bars.
Forgot to say, I reckon your economies of scale answer is the reason why. TVs were, so makes sense for monitors to be.
the most commonly used workplace productivity apps are less useful in landscape mode.
They aren’t less useful, they just don’t take advantage of the extra space on their own. A wide monitor allows you to put multiple windows side-by-side without the expense of an additional monitor though.
With that in mind; a wide monitor is useful for document editing, web browsing, media viewing/production, gaming, and can even be rotated (stand/mount permitting) for a tall view if desired.
A square monitor is much more limited.
With that in mind; a wide monitor is useful for … web browsing
Are you serious? As I’m typing this comment Lemmy has just over 4" of totally unused space on the left of my monitor and 3 1’2" of unused space on the right!
Granted that’s not the fault of the monitor but not only does widescreen reduce the amount of viewable area top to bottom modern web hackery doesn’t even fucking use all of that extra space side to side!
I have about the same viewable area now as I did in 2000 with a 20" “square” monitor!
If you’re using anything full screen, you’re doing it wrong
If you’re using anything full screen, you’re doing it wrong
I’ll make sure to start watching YT videos in tiny little boxes like we did in the 90s and 2000s. 😜
I have 3 curved monitors in the home office. Left monitor is browser, center monitor is primary task, right monitor is comms or secondary task. I can’t track more than three things at a time anyway and I bought these big ol’ curved monitors for a reason.
This is how computer monitors have been used since I first touched an Apple II+ in 1980. It’s how you use every other display in your life. The problem isn’t with people using apps full screen.
Now you’re thinking with portals!
they just don’t take advantage of the extra space on their own. A wide monitor allows you to put multiple windows side-by-side without the expense of an additional monitor though.
A square monitor is much more limited.
Stop making a single browser window full screen and use the additional space on the side for something useful. A chat application, a notepad, a calculator, file browsing, a second browser window, documents, etc.
Or rotate the display to be tall instead of wide if you really want the extra vertical space.
Just because you haven’t bothered to take advantage of the space doesn’t mean it’s useless. You’ve just trapped yourself in a close-minded box. Making the monitor wider doesn’t ‘reduce the amount of viewable area top to bottom’, it adds additional area to the sides, primarily for additional tasks in an office setting. It’s up to you to actually use it.
Stop making a single browser window full screen and use the additional space on the side for something useful.
So stop using monitors the way I’ve been using them since 1982? Stop using them the way that literally every other screen I interact with functions?
A chat application, a notepad, a calculator, file browsing, a second browser window, documents, etc.
That’s what 2nd and 3rd monitors are for.
Or rotate the display to be tall instead of wide if you really want the extra vertical space.
That’s not so easy when you’re using multiple curved monitors with a stand or mount.
I get what you’re saying, I really do, but from my point of view it’s incorrect. It breaks the usage paradigm that’s been in place since these things were invented and there’s no other screens in our lives where we intentionally use less than the full width available for a single task.
So stop using monitors the way I’ve been using them since 1982?
Yes. Technology has grown and expanded rapidly over those 43 years. You should also be changing with time to take advantage of such technological growth.
Stop using them the way that literally every other screen I interact with functions?
Your other screens can be used to multi task as well. Phones/tablets have picture-in-picture and app split-screen (both of which I use frequently).
TVs are admittedly geared towards single wide screen tasks like the obvious: media consumption. Though some smart TVs will also let you web browse while watching TV. And I’m pretty sure game consoles that facilitate streaming allow you to display chat over or beside the game.
That’s what 2nd and 3rd monitors are for.
That’s what additional monitors can be used for; but the point is with a single wide monitor you don’t have to run a second monitor. You already have that additional space available when/if you want it.
Sure, I’m usually viewing a single window; but there’s plenty of times when I want to open multiple applications side by side. I also play games and watch media; both of which are widescreen experiences. You might not need it 100% of the time, but it’s there when you do.
That’s not so easy when you’re using multiple curved monitors with a stand or mount.
You’ve got tons of screen real estate to work with then; what’s your concern? You could mount one vertically, you could use different sized displays, you could stack them.
Nobody’s forced you to stick with the setup you have. If you wamt something different, set things up differently; it’s your setup. Don’t trap yourself in a box thinking you can only set things up or use them the way you’ve seen others do it. Be your own person.
You should also be changing with time to take advantage of such technological growth.
Whoo boy that’s funny, thanks for the chuckle. I’ve been technology professional so long that I literally predate NAT. To say that I’ve changed with the time would be an understatement.
TVs are admittedly geared towards single wide screen tasks like the obvious: media consumption.
Huh, media consumption. You mean like Lemmy or any other web media?
That’s what additional monitors can be used for; but the point is with a single wide monitor you don’t have to run a second monitor.
Here’s where we diverge and despite considering the issue for several hours now I’m still not sure if this is a generational issue or something else. Obviously I’m from the time before widescreen and it looks like to me like you’re trying to use a workaround (multiple windows on a single screen) to justify what is objectively a downgrade in display technology.
You are in essence saying “Yes I know the monitor doesn’t have enough vertical space but you are supposed to use the extra horizontal space to overcome that.” I am going to counter by saying that computer monitors shouldn’t be 16x9, that’s a TV / Movie format forced into the computer industry by display makers who wanted to leverage their investment in television panels to produce cheap computer monitors. In short you are forcing yourself to find ways to work around display tech that doesn’t fit the use case; the screen is wider than it needs to be while not being tall enough.
Amusingly I was discussing this with a peer about an hour ago and he brought up ultra wide monitors like the Samsung Odyssey QD-OLED G9 (5120x1440) and after looking at it we decided that a monitor with the same physical width (48") but double the physical height (20" vs 40") and double the horizontal resolution (2880) would be near perfect. With such a monitor there would be so much real estate that app windows would stay large enough to be readable while still being capable of displaying lots of data vertically.
You could mount one vertically, you could use different sized displays, you could stack them.
Ahhh, now we hit the rub. I do a lot of remote GUI work and what I’m dropping into expects widescreen and uses all of it. Downscaling that into an app window makes the problem worse because it leaves large areas unused horizontally and there’s still not enough vertical. I could flip a monitor to portrait but then it’s too narrow to be handled correctly because what was a lack of vertical resolution has now become a lack of horizontal resolution. This is another symptom of 16:19 being a bad aspect ratio for computer displays.
Be your own person.
This person is seriously considering a pair of frameless ultra widescreen displays in a vertical stack. Expensive AF but potentially oh so usable.
You do you with multiple app windows squished to fit into today’s displays. If it works for you then it works for you.
Enjoy your day.
This is an unnecessarily patronising response.
Your answer to apps not utilising left and right space efficiently is “well you should do something else then”. It’s not the user’s fault.
Yes, that is my response and I stand by it.
Some applications take advantage of the full widescreen, some don’t need it. It’s entirely up to you to use the additional space for something else when a single application doesn’t need the extra space given to it or you just accept that it’s not needed right now.
It’s not the user’s fault.
Yes, it is the users fault. Because the user is whining that not every single application and piece of media is the exact same form factor like that’s at all a reasonable expectation.
You’re seriously upset that sometimes you’ve got more space available than absolutely necessary?
No I’m not upset by anything 😂
It sounds like you’re excusing poor UI design by saying “just use the extra space for something else”
If only those apps displayed even less content horizontally, we could get even more of them on the screen and be yet more productive, right!? 😂
I don’t think widescreens exist “primarily for additional tasks in an office setting”. I think they’re the default because, as another user said, TVs were that ratio.
It’s weird that it’s fine for widescreens to have additional areas to the sides that aren’t used by many apps, but adding space vertically that would automatically be used by every office application isn’t fine.
Yes you can use two apps side by side, yes you can rotate your screen, but the software in general literally defaults to reducing that available space by putting the taskbar and menus where they are, while usually being full screen screen by default.
Saying “You’re using it wrong” is blaming the user for using the computer the way it was presented out of the box.
Saying “You’re using it wrong” is blaming the user for using the computer the way it was presented out of the box.
It’s also the way we’ve used computers for nearly fifty years and the way we interact with every other display in our lives. As examples almost no one uses less than the full wide of their TV, Smart Phone, or Tablet. There’s no reasons that computer displays should be any different and they weren’t until pretty recently.
Edit: Deleting this comment because I’m an idiot.
I don’t think widescreens exist “primarily for additional tasks in an office setting”
Perhaps I worded this poorly.
In an office settting; the primary use of a wide display is to have multiple tasks/windows open. An email your composing beside a document you’re referencing for example.
My main point here is the additional space is there for you when you want it, instead of being missing when it’s needed.
Saying “You’re using it wrong” is blaming the user for using the computer the way it was presented out of the box.
You’ve gotta cater to the lowest common denominator there unfortunately. Things like this are presented in a simple easy to understand format, so that as many people as possible can get started with minimal help. Some people excel and explore the limits of their systems and what they can do with it; others don’t get past ‘computer basics 101’ while using their computers for little more than a web browser.
“you’re using it wrong” is a bit harsh. What you’re doing isn’t wrong, more like “there’s more you could do to utilize the technology you have available”.
I think you might be missing the point though.
Not everyone needs to multitask in two apps simultaneously. In fact most of the time, most workers are only going to be working on a single application. If that application isn’t making full use of the widescreen, then saying “just fill that space with another app” doesn’t solve anything. In fact if anything, it potentially reduces the real estate the main app had.
Yes they now have two apps open, but they’re still only working on one. They don’t “need” the other one, so why not design the primary app or web page to more appropriately scale to the display?
It’s got absolutely fuck all to do with “what can the user do to better utilise the technology” and everything to do with UI design.
Not everyone needs to multitask in two apps simultaneously.
No, that’s when you just accept that there is additional space available to you for when (not if, WHEN) it becomes necessary.
Just because you don’t need it 100% of the time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have it for when you do.
This makes no sense at all. UIs are justified in not making full use of a widescreen monitor because at some point someone might want to use another at the same time?
Not if the square monitor is the same width as the widescreen though.
A square monitor the same width as a widescreen is 77% larger overall = more expensive. (both in terms of materials and horsepower to run it)
There’s not enough benefit to justify the cost of stretching both dimensions; we use the width more than the height.
we use the width more than the height.
Tell that to my scrolling finger.
Rotate your wide monitor to be tall.
Genius.
Essentially if you want to use a monitor horizontally that’s fine, if you want to rotate it vertically that’s also fine, if you want to have equal horizontal and vertical real estate you’re out of your mind.
You turn your secondary monitor 90 degrees and rotate the screen in display settings. This is how I worked on long list items.
I am a big fan of 21:9 aspect ratio because it is wide when you want it but can be square(ish) when you don’t by snapping two windows sode by side.
Bang on, just a pity so many game devs are still pretty lazy with the support (I get it, it’s still a pretty niche aspect)
I personally think portrait monitors, like a standard modern smartphone, would resolve most of these problems.
Also for programming, most IDEs make good use of the horizontal space and expect a roughly 16:9 screen where the IDE takes up most of the space on that screen. Not that you can’t just minimise the side panels but still, it’s a helpful feature of the software.
As for why portrait isn’t the default, I dunno, but if you start using a portrait monitor at work you’ll probably get some coworkers following suit if it’s such an improvement.
I still have one of these at home
I think it’s 5:4
I don’t know about that one but “before” most screens were 4:3.
The e190sb is 1280x1024
I know that resolution is 5:4, but most screens back in the day could do them all from 320x200 to 1280x1024, the pixels would just not always be square.
I don’t know if that’s the case here though.
Thats wild! They rotated the panel OOTB? Good on them for doing something different
Think I had the exact same one in about 2008!
Yup my school had hundreds. They shoukd have kept them, they’re the nokia brick of monitors.
Humans (and most other animals) see better side-to-side than up-down. Your eyes are spaced horizontally, giving us a wider horizontal field of vision. People generally prefer putting things side-to-side in work environments, maybe also reflecting how much easier it is to move and work within a horizontal plane than a vertical one. So the upper threshold for monitor width would be longer than the upper threshold for monitor height.
That being said, I know reading is best done in narrower columns, to reduce the amount of left-right movement your eyes need to do which can cause you to lose your place when skimming lines. Three columns of text on a 16:9 monitor is way more readable than one column of text that spans the entire monitor.
And then why do we make an exception for phones which are predominantly used in portrait mode? I guess maybe just for easier 1-handed use? Maybe also to give us more peripheral vision of potential hazards and other things happening in the background when using them, since they’re mobile devices.
We did that for decades. It was pretty miserable.
I reckon that was more to do with the actual screen size though. Screens are a fuckload bigger and cheaper these days.
I mean, I think not, having lived on them, and not wanting to go back.
Its about information density. The “things” we interact with, they almost never fit into an equal dimensional density across two dimensions. There is almost always more substantially more information in one dimension than the other.
A spread sheet you are interacting with is almost always either longer in one way, or wider in another. Even if it wasn’t, creating a manner in which it could be optimally viewed would make the content irrelevantly small.
We’re better off picking one of the two dimensions, committing to an orientation, and then rotating our monitor to fit that. If we do that, we’ll get more information per unit area on the screen.
Assuming the software takes that into account too though, yes?
I mean, yes we can rotate screens if the hardware allows for it, but the defaults always seem to be “screen is horizontal, software control is also horizontal”, therefore eating up a percentage of the available working document space, which itself, is generally portrait.
I suspect the answer is because computer monitors evolved from televisions and video monitors, which standardised on 4:3 and, later, 16:9 for media viewing.
There was a brief period during the switch to LED when 3:2 and then 16:10 looked like they could take over, but 16:9 made a comeback and monitors have remained mostly in lockstep with modern TVs ever since.
I kinda liked 16:10, briefly had a work monitor with it.
That was the absolute best. 1920x1200.
For me 16:10 was so functionally identical to 16:9 that I never bothered to make the switch personally
You can still buy 1920x1200 monitors, I have two that are less than 5 years old.
Absolutely worth it for remotely accessing 1920x1080 systems.
I could, but ive got triple 27" 4K now. I dont really need more monitors
We see on a wide horizontal plane, so maybe there is a connection to that?
