Itβs 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.
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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 havenβt discovered opening multiple windows side by side.
Iβve found people in the windows world often make everything full screen all the time- such a waste. You have a 40β 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 itβs rare that I donβt 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- itβs not the monitorβs fault if you donβt 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 90βs 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 π
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.
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.
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 you have VESA mounts at your desk just use one in portrait and one in landscape, at least that's what I do
LibreOffice has a way to switch to a sidebar UI. I always preferred that, because of what you describe...
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 youβre using anything full screen, youβre doing it wrong
I'll make sure to start watching YT videos in tiny little boxes like we did in the 90s and 2000s. π
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.
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.
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.
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.
We see on a wide horizontal plane, so maybe there is a connection to that?
A 16:9 screen is basically two squares side by side, so instead of making a big square they can just make the landscape monitor bigger until it's large enough that you can comfortable view two documents side-by-side. I definitely prefer 16:10 or 3:2, though.