The myth of width: When wide screens don't work
Please can we keep laptops from getting this wide?
(Credit: Philips)The displays of the world are getting wider. For those of us who work, this is not progress. Sure, wide-screen computer screens look cool, but in the real world of working on laptops, a wide-screen display is an ergonomic step backwards.
Before I slam the move to wide-screen computers, I will gladly admit that for entertainment content, wide-screen works. Our eyes are side-by-side, after all, and having a story unfold in a way that more closely respects how we see gives a more engrossing, absorbing experience. Wide-screen plasma and LCD television sets make sense, as do CinemaScope movie theaters.
But when we have work to do, the fact that our eyes are set up to spot a herd of jackals approaching us over the plain becomes irrelevant. For most people, the world of work is in portrait mode, and wide-screen displays offer scant benefits.
Like reading a page of text or a book, most Web sites are set up with strong vertical orientation. That works for text-based material, since wide lines of text, longer than about 60 characters, become hard to read (the reader has a hard time finding the beginning of the next line).
The original source of my complaint, but almost all laptops today are wide-screen.
(Credit: CBS)What happens with modern "stretchy" sites or apps that let the user read text in a wide-screen format where line lengths get long? Pages get tiring or hard to read.
One argument given for wide-screen monitors is that they allow users to put two pages or applications side-by-side, for easier comparison. This is true, but in many cases it comes at the expense of usability for single apps. Most popular sizes of wide-screen displays show fewer vertical pixels than the more-square sizes they directly replaced, reducing the amount of text that can be comfortably shown on one screen without scrolling.
People who work with spreadsheets may take exception to this, as do those who use very large monitors that have sufficient vertical resolution. But for most people, more square, or even portrait-mode monitors would actually be easier to read.
Fortunately, Garmin also makes 4:3 aspect ratio GPS devices.
(Credit: Garmin)You won't see monitors go portrait-mode for the mainstream market, though, for two reasons: people work and play on the same displays, and since keyboards are horizontal, laptop screens have to close over them.
That's more like it.
One area where I believe we should (but probably won't) see continued releases of consumer portrait-mode displays, though: personal navigation devices. Recently the PND companies have started to offer wide-screen navigation units. How does this make sense? When we use a computer-generated map that's always rotating to show us where we're going at the top of the screen, why do we care what's out the side windows? It's what's coming up that matters. Serious navigation products for back-country hikers are portrait mode. The wider you make a map display the more you sacrifice useful information for distraction--although, again, it makes the devices look cool.
The column came about because my new MacBook has a wide-screen display (as do almost all new laptops). It's gorgeous and great for watching videos, but it does not help my productivity one whit. I have to scroll more when I'm reading and writing, which slows me down.
So maybe it's just me, but I miss boring old squarish computer screens. Because I use my computers for boring old square work more than for play.
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe. 
If you work between a laptop and a wide screen desktop, you just get used to the difference.
And has anyone noticed how many wide screen displays make people look fat??
It's doubly maddening @ work, where my laptop is "widescreen", but the second monitor I plug it into is a more pleasant 3:4 ratio. I more often than not push windows to the 3:4 ratio monitor for the real-estate.
"The myth of depth: When markerboards don't work"
Sorry, but a 4' x 16' solution is still the standard for you teachers out there!
His caveat:
"People who work with spreadsheets may take exception to this, as do those who use very large monitors that have sufficient vertical resolution. But for most people, more square, or even portrait-mode monitors would actually be easier to read. "
At work I use a 1900X1200, but these laptops are coming out with these ridiculous and crappy 1280x800 or so resolutions. It is NOT enough vertical pixels.
But I have to say I agree with the author. You really only need widescreen for movies. We need to return to monitors that pivot between portrait and widescreen views.
Like the author and others, I've lamented the widescreening of laptops for quite some time now. I prefer very high resolutions, and many of the laptop screens coming out now have such poor vertical resolutions (800! blech) that they're almost useless to me. I fear this is another case where form/style is walking all over function, and I'm normally a huge advocate of style.
If you're going to call someone an idiot, it might be best if you double-check your grammar before you hit "Submit".
I am old enough to have worked with punch-cards on IBM 403 equipment. When we went to word-processing screens, the use of black letters on a white, high-res background, in portrait-mode was ideal. These were the days of the CPT word processors and the IBM DisplayWriter.
The point here is it all depends upon what you are doing. I have complained for ages about the landscape monitors attempting to display portrait information such as newspapers, Word documents, and so forth. It is so incredibly annoying to have to constantly scroll up and down just to peek at a document. If you select "whole page" then the font is so small you can't read it.
For those of us working in an office with tons of documents, proposals, newspapers, and government work, a portrait monitor makes all the sense in the world.
Alternatively, give me a really wide screen with high-resolution so I can view two pages side-by-side, and actually read it.
If I had the luxury of sitting around playing games all day and watching the latest streaming DVD in HD, then I'd certainly like the wide-screen, 16x9 monitor. For most work, however, (spreadsheets excluded), the portrait works the best for me.
For its time, I thought this was a very ingenious solution to a very basic problem, and I wish we still had that capability today in such simple devices as a standalone desktop LCD display....
Take it one step further, the monitors may have gone wide screen but the programs are still narrow screen, with all kinds of stuff crammed at the tops and bottoms, and little or nothing on the side. Take the Office ribbon, a huge amount of space at the top of the display. On the 24" I can live with it, on my Lenovo T61 laptop its downright painful, I have actually had to turn the ribbon off. Same goes for a lot of internet pages and applications.
my dad has like 7 displays in his office (awesome, i know) and he has 1 or 2 in portrait for situations where he's reading articles, pdf's, etc. at my work i have a widescreen monitor, but i mostly use excel so it's not a big deal.
You are one of the few people here that have ever figured that out. There are a lot of monitor that one can rotate. If you have a task that works better for portrait than rotate it to portrait press a button and your graphics card will rotate the output. If you buy a widescreen monitor that can rotate you have the best of both worlds. When you are watching a video you can have it in landscape(virtually all video is FAR wider than tall) and when you are using your word processor you can use portrait.
I do somewhat understand the criticism about widescreen displays on laptops though insofar as that there are some people who are mostly doing word processing that would prefer more vertical pixels than horizontal. The only caveat with doing that is that you get smaller keyboards and most people I have encountered would prefer to scroll a bit more to having a smaller keyboard.
Or, just find your self an old PARC machine!
Seriously, I know what you mean. But that's what desktop computers with external monitors are for. You could put your MacBook in desktop mode and use a 4:3 monitor, or a portrait monitor if you can find one. If you don't know how, just do a search on Google. I actually found a short video showing you how to do it on YouTube yesterday, ironically.
The Xerox Alto and some of its' offspring are about the only examples I have ever seen of a monitor that was intended to be in set up in portrait instead of landscape. Considering the failure of portrait monitors to catch off even towards the business community I have to question of how much demand there really is for such a monitor. Even the original IBM PC (5150) used a landscape monitor. If there was such an uproar over the orientation of the monitor you would think that Compaq or one of the other clone makers of the time would have answered people's prayers.
Main reason why the Macbook isn't worth it's price, terrible screen (and glossy makes it even worse).
Having a window that is too narrow is a FAR bigger issue than one that is too short. If a monitor is too narrow to display all the text at a size that you can read than you have to scroll *EVERY* single line. To read one screen of text might require one to scroll right *and* left 30-40 times. To scroll down there is this novel button that has been on most keyboards for a couple decades called the page down button that coincidentally scrolls the page down exactly one page. Therefore, between having to press page down 10-20% more or having to scroll left and right 60-80 times it is pretty clear which is a much greater annoyance. Nobody seems to ever think about this. Furthermore, on laptops if you have a 4:3 aspect ratio the keyboards are a lot more cramped. Between a taller screen and a wider keyboard most people preferred a more comfortable keyboard. Ironically the people complaining about wide screen laptops (people who type a lot) are the people who benefit the most from them.
@ orbital318:
Sadly a lot of people whining about wide screen monitors don't seem to realize that they have been on the market for a decade.
The image content I deal with on a daily basis is typically sized for a web-friendly 800x600 or 900x600 resolution. With exceptions of course, most web pictures aren't downsized (from a higher rez) much larger than this to ensure it'll fit our audience's browsers. Working on my old 15.4" laptop (1280x800) with images loaded into Photoshop means the oft-used toolbars and palettes overlap the image. If my physical screen's aspect ratio is similar to the aspect ratio of the content I'm working on, overlapping toolbars is par for the course. Zoom down the image? Capital idea. /sarcasm
My new notebook sports a 16.5" 16:9 aspect ratio display at 1920x1080. This wider aspect ratio allows my images to reach the top and bottom edges of my work area AND provide enough horizontal space to place tools and palettes. The physical footprint of this machine lets me carry it in the same backpack I used for its 15.4" predecessor. In the 8 weeks I've been using this system, it's proven to be more efficient than all that additional clicking, zooming, and panning I had to do. I believe that's an example of greater productivity.
Why didn't I consider a 17" notebook? 1.) Most of the candidate 17" models were a backbreaking 10lbs and 2.) their increased footprint make them absolutely unuseable when shoehorned into any cattle-class flight. I don't have an issue schlepping 10lbs daily, but figure in some additional gear and we're talking about a 35-40lb sack.
This isn't just a Photoshop issue. Editing widescreen footage in Premiere Pro is better in the wider display; a source monitor and a playback monitor fits in a 16.5" workspace layout more efficiently than a 15.4" screen.
The wider screen lets me keep a windowed browser comfortably spaced out (no horz scrollbars) while allowing enough of a chat window to peek out behind it.
Watching 16:9 Hulu content blown up on a 16:9 display with no letterboxing? Fantasmic.
If you positioned your article by claiming that the general consuming/viewing/surfing public didn't need extra-wide commputer screens you might have a point.. or fraction thereof. But some of us content-makers, those whose productivity you are addressing, are finding 16:9 monitors to be quite worthwhile.
On a related note, while this article is about laptops, inferences are made about wide screens in general. I have an external wide screen and the greatest single advantage it has bar none, is that it rotates. I do a lot of technical writing (non-code). Rotating a wide screen (with drivers that perform a transform) is a HUGE advantage for authors. (It's also very good for reading this article.)
This made sense when my display was barely 600x800 pixels and though it makes sense no longer, software still is built that way. Look at the program you are running. How much stuff is at the top of the screen? The menu bar, a toolbar or two, an options bar? How much space does this waste? Why aren't these things on the side where it wouldn't matter so much?
I'll keep my wide screen display thanks - but I wish more of my software would jump into the modern world.
That being said, I think this is also partly because I am simply used to software looking the way it does. Programs re-designed for efficiency on widescreens would look REALLY weird for a bit, but would ultimately be better in the long run.
Yes, when you're reading and typing text, using the full widescreen is a no go, but that's why you don't size up your text editor or browser to full-screen. DUH! No one said you had to.
I can tell your from personal experience that there's a lot of work to do out there that doesn't involve text, and just think of people doing layouts for 2 pages at once! Any publisher would scoff at not being able to do that.
My screen I use for editing photos has the ability to turn 90 deg. for a portrait view. That almost never happens unless I'm at a photo shoot and want to show the client a full-screen view. I think that best summarizes why and industry standard should continue- people who work with text alone and can't stand not going full-screen can always get an external monitor. It's such a niche demand, there's no way you'd see major manufacturers changing their trend.
I did have a little trouble though when I needed to buy a new standard aspect ration monitor for an ultrasound machine at a local pregnancy center. A widescreen would have stretched the ultrasound image out of proportion. Between TigerDirect and NewEgg, I was able to find only one standard aspect ration monitor of the appropriate size. I wonder if next time I won't be able to find any.
@ freemarket--2008: You are absolutely right that the monitor doesn't stretch things. I remember I used to show people this repeatedly before they believed me.
Sidebars are enough of a distraction, never mind 4 spreadsheets open at once.
And the point - as I understand it - is that you actually lose vertical space and yet most applications and sites are still designed vertically.
I went from a 15" monitor to a 17" monitor to almost - but not quite - have the same height.
Since monitors are measured diagonally - wider will always be shorter for the same diagonal sive monitor!
I agree that you still need enough vertical pixels, though. Maybe the column should have focused on that, rather than aspect ratio.
Incidentally, horizontal navigation displays are more useful than vertical ones if you're using the device in a car. You not only need to know where you're going right now, but where you'll be going if you turn. Since cars can't maneuver in a vertical plane, the only turns you're going to make are horizontal ones.
Suffice it to say that I prefer the wider aspect ratio because it provides more real estate for working my tools.
Not all us spend all day reading things on the web. ;^)
(The Garmin is awful for about a dozen other reasons, as well. Grrr! Continue via way point YES or NO ha ha, gotcha.)
I agree with many commenters that 16:9/16:10 has its place (multimedia development for sure), but the marketing goons have taken that to an extreme that is a bit hard to understand. Look at the advertisements in your local paper for the big box computer stores and try to find a 4:3 monitor. Good luck.
Of course, marketing is a part of this as well - a wide-screen monitor can claim a higher diagonal measurement than the same number of pixels would give you at 4:3. So, a 21-inch widescreen monitor may have the same number of actual pixels as a 19-inch normal-aspect monitor. I'm sure that profit margins have nothing to do with that.
For that matter, what's with the wide-screen digital photo frames? Every digital camera I've ever seen has, as its default mode, an aspect ratio of close to 4:3, not anywhere near the wide-screen ratios these photo frames have. Yay for cropping!
A 21" widescreen would have 1764000pixels (1680x1050) whereas a 19" 5:4 panel would have 1310720 pixels (1280x1024). Not only does the 21" have more pixels, but it has more vertical pixels, which is what most of the anti-wide screen people are complaining about. You got the pixel numbers wrong and you got the aspect ratio of a 19" monitor wrong(5:4 is the norm, not 4:3 on 19" monitors). Unless I am missing something you don't know what you are talking about.
Furthermore, we are talking about the government here. Merely because the GSA or whatever acquisition department that you go through can't buy any 4:3 monitors doesn't mean they don't exist. Lenovo amonst others still sell them. At the very least figure you would think people would know how to not distort the image.
Generally the higher-end 'pro-sumer' digital SLRs that natively shoot the somewhat wider 3:2 aspect ratios.
I don't there are very many if any consumer cameras out there with 16:9 sensors.
A 21" widescreen would have 1764000pixels (1680x1050) - not generally for the same price as the mentioned 19" panel. You're much more likely to see 1440x900, for 1,296,000 pixels. The 1280x1024 monitor wins.
I did say distort OR waste space, didn't I?
@Eerikki
Powershot G11 - 3,648 x 2,736 = 4:3
Powershot D10 - 4000 x 3000 = 4:3
I wonder if this blog author ever thought to ask his friends if there was a way to make a display portrait in OS X before he went into histrionics.
- by john55440 January 27, 2009 6:20 AM PST
- Some of HP's wide desktop monitors are designed so that they can be rotated into the Portrait position, for viewing web sites with less scrolling etc.
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Showing 1 of 9 pages (229 Comments)With my wide 22" monitor, IE7 can be magnified to 150% or so, for those who need it.
I think my 22" monitor is the perfect size. It's not too wide to be distracting.