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?
Remember when PSUs used to have a power port in it that you plugged your monitor in to?
That was a great idea and wish it still existed but I guess they needed all the space for all the millions of peripherals that got added.
3:2 and 4:3 used to be fairly common but I think economics 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
Forgot to say, I reckon your economies of scale answer is the reason why. TVs were, so makes sense for monitors to be.
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.
LibreOffice has a way to switch to a sidebar UI. I always preferred that, because of what you describe…
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.
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
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.
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.
You can still buy 1920x1200 monitors, I have two that are less than 5 years old.
Absolutely worth it for remotely accessing 1920x1080 systems.
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
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.
Nothing would look good on a square monitor.
If you want a tall monitor, turn it sideways.
What do you mean by look good though? My question is based on productivity, and why software seems geared towards having top-down functionality on screens that generally provide more width.
A vertical monitor is better for productivity than a square one.
What is a square monitor good for? Seems a jack of all trades and master of none.
Yeah but vertical monitor with extra width is even better 😂
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 come 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.
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 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 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?
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
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.
We see on a wide horizontal plane, so maybe there is a connection to that?
I tried for a while to use two 16:9 vertically. Like you say, vertical makes a lot of sense and it works great. But web devs seem universally to assume that if it’s a tall narrow screen, to show the mobile version.
But web devs seem universally to assume that if it’s a tall narrow screen, to show the mobile version.
Web Devs are also highly allergic to using the 25% of the screen on both the right and left so only the middle 50% is useful space. It’s god damned infuriating!
