
Widescreen laptops are dumb - SoapSeller
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/4/19/17027286/laptop-widescreen-aspect-ratio
======
DonHopkins
"As if all that wasn’t enough, there’s also the matter of tabs. Tabs are a
couple of decades old now, and, like much of the rest of the desktop and web
environment, they were initially thought up in an age where the predominant
computer displays were close to square with a 4:3 aspect ratio."

Tabs are at least three decades old now, and they weren't originally
restricted to just one edge of the window:

>Tab (GUI):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(GUI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_\(GUI\))

>The WordVision DOS word processor for the IBM PC in 1982 was perhaps the
first commercially available product with a tabbed interface. PC Magazine in
1994 wrote that it "has served as a free R&D department for the software
business—its bones picked over for a decade by programmers looking for so-
called new ideas". The NeWS version of UniPress's Gosling Emacs text editor
was another early product, with multiple tabbed windows in 1988. It was used
to develop an authoring tool for the Ben Shneiderman's HyperTIES browser (the
NeWS workstation version of The Interactive Encyclopedia System), in 1988.
HyperTIES also supported pie menus for managing windows and browsing
hypermedia documents with PostScript applets. Don Hopkins developed and
released several versions of tabbed window frames for the NeWS window system
as free software, which the window manager applied to all NeWS applications,
and enabled users to drag the tabs around to any edge of the window.

Notice the layout of the overlapping Emacs windows with tabs sticking out of
their right edge: since text is much wider than it is tall, you can stack up a
lot more tabbed windows with tabs on their left or right side, and still read
their labels.

>HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU)

>Demo of UniPress Emacs based HyperTIES authoring tool, by Don Hopkins, at the
University of Maryland Human Computer Interaction Lab.

Notice how you can drag the tabs of these NeWS windows to any edge or
proportion of the height or width, and use the tab as a proxy for the window
by popping up a window management pie menu on it, even if the rest of the
window is covered:

>NeWS Tab Window Demo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4)

>Demo of the Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0. Developed
and demonstrated by Don Hopkins.

Notice how the tabbed windows can be stuck on the visual PostScript stack like
a short order chef's "spike". The tabs enable "direct stack manipulation": and
they are constrained (by "snap dragging") to slide up and down on the stack
(rearranging the order of the items on the PostScript stack), and can be
pulled far enough away that they "pop" off the stack, or dragged back onto the
stack so they snap into place, and you can directly drop them into any depth
of the stack.

>PSIBER Space Deck Demo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuC_DDgQmsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuC_DDgQmsM)

>Demo of the NeWS PSIBER Space Deck. Research performed under the direction of
Mark Weiser and Ben Shneiderman. Developed and documented thanks to the
support of John Gilmore and Julia Menapace. Developed and demonstrated by Don
Hopkins. Described in "The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug
Eradication Routines".

>The Shape of PSIBER Space - October 1989. PostScript Interactive Bug
Eradication Routines.

[http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97)

>There is a text window onto a NeWS process, a PostScript interpreter with
which you can interact (as with an "executive"). PostScript is a stack based
language, so the window has a spike sticking up out of it, representing the
process's operand stack. Objects on the process's stack are displayed in
windows with their tabs pinned on the spike. (See figure 1) You can feed
PostScript expressions to the interpreter by typing them with the keyboard, or
pointing and clicking at them with the mouse, and the stack display will be
dynamically updated to show the results.

>Objects on the PSIBER Space Deck appear in overlapping windows, with labeled
tabs sticking out of them. Each object has a label, denoting its type and
value, i.e. "integer 42". Each window tab shows the type of the object
directly contained in the window. Objects nested within other objects have
their type displayed to the left of their value. The labels of executable
objects are displayed in italics. [...]

>Tab Windows

>The objects on the deck are displayed in windows with labeled tabs sticking
out of them, showing the data type of the object. You can move an object
around by grabbing its tab with the mouse and dragging it. You can perform
direct stack manipulation, pushing it onto stack by dragging its tab onto the
spike, and changing its place on the stack by dragging it up and down the
spike. It implements a mutant form of "Snap-dragging", that constrains non-
vertical movement when an object is snapped onto the stack, but allows you to
pop it off by pulling it far enough away or lifting it off the top. [Bier,
Snap-dragging] The menu that pops up over the tab lets you do things to the
whole window, like changing view characteristics, moving the tab around,
repainting or recomputing the layout, and printing the view.

>Designing to Facilitate Browsing: A Look Back at the Hyperties Workstation
Browser. By Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Rodrigo Botafogo, Don
Hopkins, William Weiland.

[http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/102](http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/102)

>Since storyboards are text files, they can be created and edited in any text
editor as well as be manipulated by UNIX facilities (spelling checkers, sort,
grep, etc...). On our SUN version Unipress Emacs provides a multiple windows,
menus and programming environment to author a database. Graphics tools are
launched from Emacs to create or edit the graphic components and target tools
are available to mark the shape of each selectable graphic element. The
authoring tool checks the links and verifies the syntax of the article markup.
It also allows the author to preview the database by easily following links
from Emacs buffer to buffer. Author and browser can also be run concurrently
for final editing. [...]

>The more recent NeWS version of Hyperties on the SUN workstation uses two
large windows that partition the screen vertically. Each window can have links
and users can decide whether to put the destination article on top of the
current window or on the other window. The pie menus made it rapid and easy to
permit such a selection. When users click on a selectable target a pie menu
appears (Figure 1) and allows users to specify in which window the destination
article should be displayed (practically users merely click then move the
mouse in direction of the desire window) . This strategy is easy to explain to
visitors and satisfying to use. An early pilot test with four subjects was
run, but the appeal of this strategy is very strong and we have not conducted
more rigorous usability tests.

>In the author tool, we employ a more elaborate window strategy to manage the
15-25 articles that an author may want to keep close at hand. We assume that
authors on the SUN/Hyperties will be quite knowledgeable in UNIX and Emacs and
therefore would be eager to have a richer set of window management features,
even if the perceptual, cognitive, and motor load were greater. Tab windows
have their title bars extending to the right of the window, instead of at the
top. When even 15 or 20 windows are open, the tabs may still all be visible
for reference or selection, even thought the contents of the windows are
obscured. This is a convenient strategy for many authoring tasks, and it may
be effective in other applications as well.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/HyperTIESAuth...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/HyperTIESAuthoring.jpg)

Unfortunately most of today's "cargo cult" imitative user interface designs
have all "standardized" on the idea that the menu bars all belong at the top
of the screen and nowhere else, menus items should layout vertically downward
and no other directions, tabs should be rigidly attacked to the top edge and
no other edge, and the user can't move them around. But there's no reason it
has to be that way.

------
strmpnk
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 rearrange my UI or use non-widescreen
devices. The responsive sites can be even worse too since they’ll snap into a
mobile layout at anything less than 1000px wide or so and then increase all of
the margins and icon sizes for touch accuracy purposes. It looks extremely
silly and wastes even more space than these layers of toolbars hanging around
the edge of a browser.

~~~
spystath
Not only that, but many websites tend to have very large left and right
margins. One would expect that by reducing the width of the browser window the
margins would be adjusted but instead the website either "won't fit" in the
resized window requiring you to scroll horizontally or will reduce the width
of the central column.

~~~
carussell
That's people doing margins wrong. They see a CSS property called 'margin' and
go for that, which ends up only working well for displays and window sizes
comparable to their own. What they should be using 'margin' for is to specify
the _minimum_ outer padding and combine it with 'max-width' to allow the
browser to apply flexible margins appropriate for whatever window size the
reader actually has.

------
cup-of-tea
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 a start. 4:3 is perfect for me to be able
to have two columns of code filling the entire screen.

~~~
chisleu
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

~~~
always_good
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.

------
lamename
Screens are visual, and human vision is biased to search lateral space over
vertical space.

This is due to the nature of humans' visuospatial limitations. We're largely
2d animals in our movement: front/back & left/right, not so much up down. This
is different from animals like birds and fish who constantly have to navigate
all 3 dimensions to catch prey and avoid death.

We aren't ignorant of vertical space, but horizontal space is much more well
attended to by the human brain, spatially and visually. (Video game designers
encounter this problem in getting players to look up.)

Vertical screens for the masses started with mobile, because constraints of
the hand matter more than the biases of vision in that case.

Of course as desktop screens become giant, lateral vs vertical space becomes a
less important distinction, but understanding why "widescreen" came about over
"square" is important. Of course, this all varies by task, but I imagine this
is a big reason why 16:9 came about.

~~~
Zak
When reading text, I believe the opposite to be true. It's why newspapers use
relatively narrow columns of text despite having a lot of width to work with.
It's much easier to keep my place and process information if I don't have to
move my eyes much horizontally.

When it comes to scanning for unexpected information, you may be right. A high
aspect ratio might be better suited for gaming, at least with games where a
significant element is scanning the screen for information and responding to
it quickly.

One more data point to throw in is that according to Wikipedia, the human
field of view is approximately 1.5:1. That suggests to me that 1.5:1 is a good
aspect ratio for a general-purpose display.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Field_of_view](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_eye#Field_of_view)

~~~
ropeadopepope
The problem with both yours and the parent's assertion is context. Newspapers
are easy to move so the portion you're reading is in your field of view. Your
monitor isn't and it's used for much more than just reading static text. 1.5:1
may be a good reading aspect ratio, but if you need multiple things with that
aspect ratio open and on the screen at the same time then you need a wider
screen.

edit: I just realized a 3:2 screen is basically two 1.5:1 "areas". There are
some laptops that have a 3:2 screen mentioned in other places in this thread.

I do wish I had a better way of splitting content into readable newspaper
style columns, though. Modern web design is pretty antagonistic toward this
end. There was a MacOS app that used to do this[0], but it hasn't been updated
in years and there isn't an alternative for windows.

[0]: [http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/](http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/)

~~~
Zak
3:2 is one 1.5:1 area. It's two 1.5:2, or 3:4 areas.

I don't find 3:2 to be an especially good aspect ratio for fullscreen text.
It's still either too wide or too short, but 3:4 is pretty good, so two
columns on 3:2 is two pretty good text areas on a 12-15" diagonal screen. It's
also one pretty good text area and some UI, ads, etc... on either side.

I should note that physical size is a major constraint here. On a laptop, I
want a column of text to be about 4-6" (10-15cm) wide. A desktop screen that's
usually farther away can be a bit wider, maybe 8-10" (20-25cm). Having those
columns be very tall is fine. I've been using a 24" 9:16 display for having
documentation up while coding lately.

------
JorgeGT
Well, I really like being able to put a code editor on the left and then a
browser, terminal, document, LaTeX output on the right of the screen without
them becoming too constrained horizontally. But probably this is a very
particular use case?

~~~
wffurr
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!

~~~
fphhotchips
Isn't this just saying "if you make the screen bigger, you get more space"?

~~~
lmm
Indeed. Better argument: for a fixed diagonal, you get the most space by
having a square screen.

~~~
SllX
Plus potentially a bigger keyboard with more rows. If Apple had done that with
the new MBPs they could have had room for both full-size function keys and the
Touchbar. C'est la vie.

Edit: after posting I realized something was missing. I meant had they done
this and increased the diagonal to say, 17 or more inches.

------
yscik
Meanwhile the site has a fixed header taking away vertical space, like many
others. Maybe interface design should accomodate the fact that every single
desktop user uses a widescreen display and start putting navigation on the
side. Vertical tabs and taskbars can also be done in most browsers and OSes.
There would probably be a lot of friction if vendors made that the default,
but it's still easier than replacing every monitor in existence.

~~~
madmulita
At least the header has something in it, the white margins are completely
useless but eat a lot of real state.

~~~
UncleEntity
Yes, the ability to "tweet" and "share". Neither of which I ever do so it's
just a bunch of wasted space.

My favorite is the headers that mess up scrolling with the space key -- scroll
down then immediately scroll up because the header is covering part of the
content.

And don't even get me started on sites (looking at you Medium) that have both
headers and footers...

~~~
exergy
ublock's "content rule" feature gets a lot of use out of me for this exact
reason.

------
bsharitt
I find 4:3 too square for both tablets and laptops as it seriously detracts
from watching widescreen video content such as nearly all newer movies and TV
shows, but 16:9 does have seem a bit too wide compared to height, especially
on tablets when you try to use it in portrait mode and it seems ridiculously
tall. I've found 16:10 to be a better than 16:9, and while I haven't had a 3:2
laptop, the 3:2 Nook HD+ from a few years back is probably my favorite table
screen(shame about the rest of the tablet) in that it didn't compromise movies
too much, but wasn't awkward in portrait.

~~~
cimmanom
Sure, but a lot of us use our laptops for tasks besides watching video.

~~~
bsharitt
Uh, yes that was indeed the point of my comment, thank you for restating that.
If video was the only important thing, 16:9 across the board would be
important. But going the other way to 4:3 is a vast over correction as it
would make the screen nearly useless for video.

~~~
cimmanom
Maybe not all laptops should be 4:3, but that doesn't mean none should be.

Many of us never use our laptops (especially employer-owned ones) for full-
screen video, or have no objection to the letterboxing and slightly smaller
video size when we do.

"Nearly useless" seems like a ridiculous exaggeration to me. I have an iPad
(4:3) used for little other than video, and love it.

------
nekopa
I have to say, I really miss the 4:3 ratio on tablets, as I do most of my
reading there. I've been trying to read now via landscape orientation and
scrolling down the page.

It works (kinda) but I miss having the whole page at a view...

~~~
walterbell
iPad is 4:3 HiDPI/Retina.

------
davidhyde
The article didn't mention why 16:9 screens are chosen over 16:10 screens. You
have to make 5% less pixels (screen area) which is a direct cost saving. You
can still market your screen at 13" but make it for less money. The more
vendors that go for this cost saving approach, the more you gain from
economies of scale which drives down the cost further (or drives up the cost
of 16:10). Since people look at screen diagonal over screen area, they are
usually none the wiser.

------
makecheck
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 to making things
simply resizable. Ever seen a program pop up a list of 1000 choices that only
shows about 4 of them, truncating half the names, with a useless miniature
scrollbar and no ability to resize, on a gigantic screen?

The day I got the iPad 1, it was the coolest thing ever. It took just weeks
for that to be gradually ruined by ridiculous decisions made in software (web
sites that could no longer be pinch-zoomed trying to “help” me with a “mobile-
optimized” interface, apps lazily zooming up from phone sizes and making
terrible use of space, etc.). To this day I would never opt into a “pro”
version of that experience; I simply can’t stand software that constantly
wants to tell me how much space I have been rationed for each thing.

~~~
c22
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.

------
vvanders
Happy to see the Surface line called out there, love the 3:2 screen on my
Surface Book. So much more usable space than the traditional 16:9/10.

~~~
dman
Really wish they did a 15 inch.

~~~
013a
They... do. Surface Book 2 comes in 13.5 or 15" sizes, both 3:2 aspect ratio.

~~~
dman
Thanks for the pointer!

------
Zardoz84
Nobody noticed that 16:9 and 16:10 it's a lossy approximation to the golden
ratio (1,777 and 1,6 vs 1,618)?

Also, the 21:9 (2,333) it's a lossy approximation to the silver ratio (2,414).

But probably nobody knows that 4:3 (1,333) it's a lossy approximation to the
Córdoba ratio (1,306).

Yes, the most popular screen sizes approximate to the most beauty rectangle
proportions.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_ratio)

* [https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rect%C3%A1ngulo_cordob%C3%A9s](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rect%C3%A1ngulo_cordob%C3%A9s) (Spanish)

------
doikor
Outside of gaming and videos I pretty much never full screen anything. Just
put two windows side by side and 16:9 (and wider) starts to make a lot more
sense.

~~~
xxs
No code diff?

~~~
doikor
I use unified diff format.

------
dboreham
Pro tip: put the toolbar on the left side of the screen rather than the the
bottom location.

~~~
samcat116
I have the dock on the left of all of my Macs .

~~~
wingerlang
Always showing?

~~~
cimmanom
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.

~~~
wingerlang
I just set my dock animation delay to 0. I rarely click icons in the dock
though.

~~~
cimmanom
I often drag items to the dock to open them in an application other than the
default (only the finder let's you select what app to open a file in without
doing that).

I also have an issue where if I've got multiple windows from a single app open
in different virtual desktops, the only way to get to the other windows from
the app is to click the dock icon - it can't be done via keyboard as far as I
can tell. (And yes, it's infuriating.)

------
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.

~~~
flixic
> Lateral space is simply not as valuable as vertical space in desktop apps or
> on the web.

This easily boils down to the fact that our language is horizontal, and we
don't read rotated text very well.

It informs design decisions, creating horizontal tab bars, menu bars,
navigations, etc.

~~~
kodablah
Nobody is asking for rotated text. There are many applications that have mini
dockable assistant windows on either side of the main document window. Our
file system browsers list items vertically, so can our browsers. Hell, most do
with bookmarks, just not active tabs. It's more a problem of group think and
the trend towards reduced customization that causes this, not language
direction.

------
efficax
This is where I mourn the discontinuation of the Chromebook Pixel with it's
glorious 3:2 high res display. A moment of silence please

~~~
jasperry
Samsung's Chromebook Plus has a 3:2 2400x1600 display, and it scales
flawlessly.

~~~
Zak
My mother bought one of these on my advice. It is, indeed a very nice screen.
When can I have one on a Thinkpad?

------
KasianFranks
Not as dumb as screen real estate when need to cut code, monitor logs and
compare on multiple terminals.

------
mxwsn
My favorite laptop that I've ever owned was an unusual 21:9 ultrabook about 5
years ago [0]. The author does acknowledge in the second to last paragraph
that ultra widescreen can be helpful, and boy was it. I could fit my terminal
side by side with my text editor split into two 80-char tabs, or fit my
terminal, text editor, and chrome all together. It was the closest thing to
having dual monitors on a laptop without having too strange or annoying of a
shape.

[0]:
[https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062470/toshiba-21-9-ultra...](https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062470/toshiba-21-9-ultrabook-
ivy-bridge-satellite-u840w)

------
justherefortart
I wouldn't have ever guessed I'd love the 3:2 of my Surface but I agree with
this article.

I'd still probably choose 16:10 because it's close enough, but 16:9 bugs me to
no end (LENOVO) when there's a huge bezel above and below the screen.

At high enough resolution the side bar development doesn't impede me anymore
(1600x1200 seemed good, 1400x1050 a little less on my old Thinkpads).

If the Surface were just more reliable I'd consider it. Until them I'm still
using Thinkpads (in spite of their own shortcomings).

------
sfink
Sidebars! If you take a day to get used to the using a sidebar for browser
tabs, you'll never go back. I prefer Tree-Style Tabs on Firefox, but it's far
from the only option.

Then again... even with that, I guess I agree with the OP. Even after turning
on the sidebar, there's more horizontal space than I need. And I love screen
real estate.

I long ago got used to black bars, and don't watch that much video on my
laptop anyway. Usually when I do, I'm connected to an external monitor.

------
bluedino
Toshiba released a real widescreen laptop a few years back. The 845W. 21:9,
1792x768 pixels. It was neat, Staples or OfficeMax (I can't remember) blew
them out for $499, but I ended up returning it because 768 pixels is just not
enough room to get anything done. Besides, it had all the issues of a typical
Windows laptop of the time, battery life wasn't very good, touchpad was
terrible, etc.

Sony also tried this with the VAIO P, in a smaller format with a 1600x768
screen.

------
zero_intp
Users who state others use cases as irrelevant are dumb.

As a router jockey, I use widescreen (laptops) for multiple terminal sessions,
iterm2 with 4 or 6 80x40 cli windows.

------
pfooti
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?

~~~
babygoat
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.

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

~~~
boomlinde
Using fractions to describe fractions sort of defeats the point, doesn't it?
You confuse me.

~~~
pfooti
Generally speaking (from a math education perspective), people are bad at
denominators. If you really want to compare ratios, and have established in
the writing decimals in the numerator to afford that (TFA used 19.5:9 to
describe an iphone which is what started my rant) then you should use 14.4:9
instead of 16:10.

People see the latter and think it is quite similar to 16:9 because the 16s
are the same, and don't realize that this is not true. 16:10 is actually
closer in form factor to 3:2 than 16:9.

But as a neighbor reply pointed out, it would probably be best to normalize to
one. Do you want a 1.5 aspect ratio (3:2) or a 1.77 (16:9) one? Much easier to
compare single numbers with each other.

~~~
boomlinde
I don't think 1.77 would make more intuitive sense to the average consumer of
this type of product than 16:9, for the same reason that you don't typically
write "add one unit of flour and 1.33 units of sugar" in a recipe.

Particularly for screens, which most people think of in terms of two
dimensional surfaces, using simple fractions seems more obvious, and for
ratios like 4:3 and 16:9, numbers are particularly useless because they can't
be used to exactly describe the relationship.

------
Zardoz84
At least, some one that noticed that vertical space on screens is important!

For many years (since I grab my first 16:9 screen), I used and suggested to
others to put the taskbar on a lateral. Because It allow to display more text!
You have a more wide screen and you can afford to lose a few of horizontal
space better that losing a few of vertical space.

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rhacker
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?

~~~
mark-r
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.

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petecox
Aspect ratios are one thing but a number of tasks are just better in portrait.
For that purpose I have a desktop monitor stand that rotates 90 degrees.

Trickier on a laptop but can't someone design a 'convertible' with a rotate-
able kickstand, so that a detachable typecover snaps into place regardless of
whether the screen is in landscape or portrait?

~~~
slantyyz
>> Aspect ratios are one thing but a number of tasks are just better in
portrait.

Aspect ratios and orientation are moot if you have more real estate and
pixels.

If you were to have something like a 55" curved 8K monitor and good eyesight
(or glasses), aspect ratio would be less important to you, since that screen
would cover most of your field of view while still providing you with high
pixel density.

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trumped
Maybe it's just me, but I don't like glossy computer screens either... I'd
rather use matte. It seems like matte screens make a bit of a comeback but it
was hard to find one years ago.

I once heard a rumor that they were doing widescreens because they were
cheaper to manufacture... not sure how true that is...

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hesk
I disagree with the premise of the article that you only use one application
at time on a laptop. I almost always use a split screen setup where I have my
notes on the right side and another application on the left. In my view, wider
is better.

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Razengan
Regarding the idea that _" human vision is biased to search lateral space over
vertical space"_, what has influenced us to have writing systems that are
almost universally horizontal?

I can only think of Japanese that may be written vertically.

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jessaustin
My taste is generally for more squarish screens, but it must be said: the
image at the beginning of TFA supports the point less than it shows the
goofiness of Verge's design.

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apocalypstyx
I hear writers with this complaint alot, too. But I've never understood it.
Sure, if you've only got the one file, there's black/white space on either
side of the column (if you're fullscreened and in full-on anti-distraction
mode), but it's just never bothered me like it does everyone else. However, I
find it's great to be able to split emacs vertically and have
notes/documentation/outlines on the left and the actual document on the right
and both hold an 80+ character line with my preferred font. And I wouldn't go
back unless I had to.

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youdontknowtho
I disagree. I like the wider line length for coding. (No I don't stick to 80
chars line length.)

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thvu1k
I don't agree. They're very useful (ex. graphic design)

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jlebrech
depends how tall the screen is.

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nabc45
16:9 is dumb.

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mariusmg
What a moronic article. More space is always better. On Windows/Linux just
chuck the taskbar on the left/right of the screen and enjoy the extra visible
space.

The shit some people complain about , unbelieavable......

~~~
cup-of-tea
It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's 180
lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text.

~~~
slantyyz
>> It's not more space. My 4:3 monitor has a resolution of 1600x1200. That's
180 lines of pixels more than a 1080p screen which is about 13 lines of text.

And it's 320 less lines horizontally.

What matters to you may not matter to the next person, because their use case
is different from yours.

No matter what laptop (and monitor) manufacturers do with respect to aspect
ratio, they're never going to please everyone with their design decision.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who don't
want widescreen.

This is hacker news. Surely here we can complain that they're not made for
programming. I also do a lot of writing and extra width is utterly useless for
that.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Why do they have to choose only one? Just offer options for people who
don't want widescreen.

Isn't the answer kinda simple? If Apple were to decide to offer non-widescreen
laptops and they sold like hotcakes, everyone would follow suit. For better or
worse, Apple sets the trends on laptop form factors.

