4 ms·

Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what?

ardy42 8y ago
> Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what? No, I have some nice, large 16:10 monitors. However, that brings up a good point: if you're designing your stuff to only look good on a MacBook's retina display, you're doing it wrong.
- rleigh 8y ago
  You need to cater for both nowadays, I think. I recently upgraded from a 26" 16:10 1920×1200 display to a similarly-sized 16:9 4K display. I ran them side-by-side for a few days to compare. The difference in text quality was night and day. After using the 4K for a week the quality of the old display looked terrible: blurry and unreadable. Like going back to 800×600! I sold it; I saw no value in it as a secondary display. If I do ever need a second, it will be another 4K. Or 8K when it's available and affordable. If you're developing, writing or reading all day long, the improved legibility makes such a difference for ease of reading, eyestrain and headaches that it makes little sense to retain the old. We clearly need to support low DPI displays for some time to come; the installed base is huge. However, high DPI displays are the future, and it's going to be increasingly a requirement that they are also properly catered for. I'm not a particularly big fan of the trend by Microsoft (for example) to use very thin fonts with Windows 10. Just because you can to show off the technology, doesn't mean you should. I'd prefer bolder, more easily legible text even with a hi-DPI display, even if the thin ones are fashionable for some reason.
  - mark-r 8y ago
    I only wish 4K was offered in 16:10, or just that 16:10 was more popular in general. I'll be hanging on to my 1920x1200 until it dies.
    - rleigh 8y ago
      Yes, it is annoying. However, it's not as bad as I thought it might be. Since the display is quite big in size, I generally use one window on each half of the display and I don't feel I'm really missing out on vertical space too much. The DPI is sufficiently high that I don't find the horizontal size too small either, which was certainly the case with half of a 1920×1200 display previously. On the other hand, it's sufficiently big that I don't generally need such a large space. I could have gone with a physically smaller 4K display with a higher DPI and still been very happy.
      - eiaoa 8y ago
        My main problem with 16:9 is how obscenely long they are. I use my monitors to do work, not watch movies, so I have a lot more need for vertical real-estate. Tilting them on their side doesn't help, because they're far too narrow that way.
        ramraj07 8y ago
        Boy do I want to know what you feel about them ultrawide monitors
        eiaoa 8y ago
        They are harbingers of the computing apocalypse and have shown that progress is a lie. By 2050 we'll be forced to use monitors with the aspect ratio of swords, because the manufactures are going to need to find another ratio to senselessly maximize after they've achieved peak thinness.
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    Same, I have 2560x1440 at 24" at work and a 4K 27" at home, the Dell 24" 1920x1200 I replaced look terrible (and they where good in their day).
- hbosch 8y ago
  Most of the brands in the linked blog post are actually designing for iPhone retina displays, most likely.
FPGAhacker 8y ago
Fonts look pretty bad on my monitors at work in some apps (putty is giving me grief at the moment). x1080 is pretty common native, and is not too far off from 768. The right font matters a lot to me. I like thin sans serif...always looking for a font that resembles what I saw on an old Apollo workstation (if I recall correctly, and I probably don’t). Source Code Pro seems to be the best I’ve found, but I can’t get it to look right in putty.
SilasX 8y ago
If your web interface breaks because someone is trying to see it on a small monitor, you probably did something very wrong on your end.
mark-r 8y ago
Monitor resolutions have been stagnant for a very long time. The 1024 x 768 monitors of old were about the same DPI as today's 1920 x 1080 monitors, since the screens have gotten larger. I blame Microsoft. For far too long Windows programs haven't been able to scale gracefully, making odd resolutions painful to work with.

> Do you still use a 1024 x 768 monitor or what? No, I have some nice, large 16:10 monitors. However, that brings up a good point: if you're designing your stuff to only look good on a MacBook's retina display, you're doing it wrong.

rleigh 8y ago
You need to cater for both nowadays, I think. I recently upgraded from a 26" 16:10 1920×1200 display to a similarly-sized 16:9 4K display. I ran them side-by-side for a few days to compare. The difference in text quality was night and day. After using the 4K for a week the quality of the old display looked terrible: blurry and unreadable. Like going back to 800×600! I sold it; I saw no value in it as a secondary display. If I do ever need a second, it will be another 4K. Or 8K when it's available and affordable. If you're developing, writing or reading all day long, the improved legibility makes such a difference for ease of reading, eyestrain and headaches that it makes little sense to retain the old. We clearly need to support low DPI displays for some time to come; the installed base is huge. However, high DPI displays are the future, and it's going to be increasingly a requirement that they are also properly catered for. I'm not a particularly big fan of the trend by Microsoft (for example) to use very thin fonts with Windows 10. Just because you can to show off the technology, doesn't mean you should. I'd prefer bolder, more easily legible text even with a hi-DPI display, even if the thin ones are fashionable for some reason.
- mark-r 8y ago
  I only wish 4K was offered in 16:10, or just that 16:10 was more popular in general. I'll be hanging on to my 1920x1200 until it dies.
  - rleigh 8y ago
    Yes, it is annoying. However, it's not as bad as I thought it might be. Since the display is quite big in size, I generally use one window on each half of the display and I don't feel I'm really missing out on vertical space too much. The DPI is sufficiently high that I don't find the horizontal size too small either, which was certainly the case with half of a 1920×1200 display previously. On the other hand, it's sufficiently big that I don't generally need such a large space. I could have gone with a physically smaller 4K display with a higher DPI and still been very happy.
    - eiaoa 8y ago
      My main problem with 16:9 is how obscenely long they are. I use my monitors to do work, not watch movies, so I have a lot more need for vertical real-estate. Tilting them on their side doesn't help, because they're far too narrow that way.
      - ramraj07 8y ago
        Boy do I want to know what you feel about them ultrawide monitors
        eiaoa 8y ago
        They are harbingers of the computing apocalypse and have shown that progress is a lie. By 2050 we'll be forced to use monitors with the aspect ratio of swords, because the manufactures are going to need to find another ratio to senselessly maximize after they've achieved peak thinness.
- noir_lord 8y ago
  Same, I have 2560x1440 at 24" at work and a 4K 27" at home, the Dell 24" 1920x1200 I replaced look terrible (and they where good in their day).
hbosch 8y ago
Most of the brands in the linked blog post are actually designing for iPhone retina displays, most likely.

FPGAhacker 8y ago

Fonts look pretty bad on my monitors at work in some apps (putty is giving me grief at the moment). x1080 is pretty common native, and is not too far off from 768. The right font matters a lot to me. I like thin sans serif...always looking for a font that resembles what I saw on an old Apollo workstation (if I recall correctly, and I probably don’t). Source Code Pro seems to be the best I’ve found, but I can’t get it to look right in putty.

SilasX 8y ago

If your web interface breaks because someone is trying to see it on a small monitor, you probably did something very wrong on your end.

mark-r 8y ago

Monitor resolutions have been stagnant for a very long time. The 1024 x 768 monitors of old were about the same DPI as today's 1920 x 1080 monitors, since the screens have gotten larger. I blame Microsoft. For far too long Windows programs haven't been able to scale gracefully, making odd resolutions painful to work with.