Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I think 16:10 is a great aspect ratio. In OS X on a 13" screen, it's perfect for two 80x25 emacs buffers side by side.



Now extend the screen vertically until it becomes a 4:3 screen. Now you can fit two 80x30 emacs buffers side by side.


But then it's a bigger screen. To maintain the same screen size, you need to extend vertically while narrowing horizontally. Now you can't fit 2 80 column buffers side by side without reducing font size. A 16:10 screen can be treated as two side-by-side 8:10 windows, or basically the same ratio as a piece of letter-sized paper. A 4:3 screen is two side-by-side 2:3 windows, which is substantially narrower than paper size.


Yeah, I think there's a certain width you need to meet before growing vertically is comfortable. A 16:10 12.5" screen I have is wide enough. A 4:3 14" screen I had was barely wide enough.

Once you hit that threshold, going taller is better. And if you're going to be below that threshold anyway, going taller is better, I think.

Of course, this changes from application to application -- when I used an IDE like Visual Studio, there was no hope of putting buffers side by side, and vertical space was all that mattered.

I don't tile web browser windows, either. I'm using a 12.5" 1280x800 screen right now, and it's maximized, with the Windows taskbar on the right side. Using half the screen would be kind of pointless (I'm not reading two documents at once) and I often would like to have a taller screen when web browsing.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: