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.
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.
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I never thought that wide screen monitors would make work harder than easier until i read this article. Now, my style of technological thinking has slightly been altered seeing that technological advances can actually be taking us back to problems than rather solving them. When will something perfect come out??? i think never.
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