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I have often argued that 16:9 is a terrible ratio for office work. 4:3 was a great ratio for creating documents since they are almost necessarily longer than th

I have often argued that 16:9 is a terrible ratio for office work. 4:3 was a great ratio for creating documents since they are almost necessarily longer than they are wide. The relevant portion of most spreadsheets is rather wide, since you don't necessarily care about looking at every row at once; however menu bars and other information is generally placed horizontally across the screen, eating up valuable real-estate. I've tried rotating my monitors so they are long in the vertical direction, which is great for reading, but doesn't account for the space needed on either side of a document for supporting information, or what have you.

mdip 10y ago
Completely agree! I resisted replacing a laptop for more than 2 years because all of the options available were 16:9 and I had an nice, high-resolution 4:3 display. That was years ago. In my basement office, I have both of my displays set at a vertical orientation. When I took a new job, which has me working full time out of my home, I vowed to get used to using my laptop's display (and purchased a laptop based almost entirely on the display characteristics) because I wanted to be able to code wherever I was. This resulted in my writing an extension for Visual Studio to help identify certain code blocks I often scroll around aimlessly for and using parts of the IDE that I hadn't often used due to being able to see even terribly written classes all on one screen. With a few adaptations, which included relaxing my style rules, I'm as productive on my 1080P display as I am with those two monitors. Some things are more difficult, but its made up for by being able to get up and work outside, up the road or on the beach up north, when I run into a wall with a coding problem. I require fewer breaks because I work feels less like work when you can change your environment on a whim rather than adapt to it.

mdip 10y ago

Completely agree! I resisted replacing a laptop for more than 2 years because all of the options available were 16:9 and I had an nice, high-resolution 4:3 display. That was years ago. In my basement office, I have both of my displays set at a vertical orientation. When I took a new job, which has me working full time out of my home, I vowed to get used to using my laptop's display (and purchased a laptop based almost entirely on the display characteristics) because I wanted to be able to code wherever I was. This resulted in my writing an extension for Visual Studio to help identify certain code blocks I often scroll around aimlessly for and using parts of the IDE that I hadn't often used due to being able to see even terribly written classes all on one screen. With a few adaptations, which included relaxing my style rules, I'm as productive on my 1080P display as I am with those two monitors. Some things are more difficult, but its made up for by being able to get up and work outside, up the road or on the beach up north, when I run into a wall with a coding problem. I require fewer breaks because I work feels less like work when you can change your environment on a whim rather than adapt to it.