5 ms·

Almost every screen we use is wide-screen, yet almost every activity we use computers for involves scrolling through portrait documents. Putting the taskbar on

Almost every screen we use is wide-screen, yet almost every activity we use computers for involves scrolling through portrait documents. Putting the taskbar on the side reclaims some precious vertical space at the cost of fairly un-needed horizontal space. It's the logical choice - the only reason everyone doesn't do it is design inertia from when screens were 4:3. This is a shame.

cedilla 5y ago
Maybe some value a wider taskbar over one crammed to the side, even at the expense of 3.7% of their vertical space. Or they value their horizontal space more than you do, because they like have a few windows side by side. Or any other number of imaginable reasons.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  A vertical taskbar is particularly useful when running on a screen with few pixel-equivalents (bad eyesight, or low angular view), a lot of software tends to break when going under 720 or even 768 equivalent-lines, this makes it less likely for important bottom buttons to end up "outside" of the screen.
8note 5y ago
the corner is a useful place because i can get my mouse there without knowing where my mouse is Having something like the start button there ensures that nothing funky is being done to my pointer in the place where I'm looking for it
- chris37879 5y ago
  And if you move your start bar to the right, that button goes to the top right corner.
Epiphany21 5y ago
In my opinion it would be more logical to allow the entire task bar to shrink itself down into the Windows logo on the lefthand side like the MacOS 9 control strip. The user could then mouse over it or click it or use a certain key combination to restore it to the full screen width. Getting rid of terrible widescreen monitors as the industry standard might also help (there are Chinese companies dabbling with 3:2 displays, so the market is there). The 16:9 aspect ratio is used purely to increase yields and decrease material costs. If Microsoft is mandating a TPM, they might as well mandate a display aspect ratio that makes their desktop UI semi-usable.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  What surprises me is how little overlap you see between TV and monitor panels. I figured that there was a lot of crossover due to the NTSC/ATSC transition basically occuring simultaneously with the CRT/LCD switchover. The demand to replace every TV set in the country meant they'd be making a bazillion 16:9 panels in every price and size grade imaginable. The obvious assumption would be that the monitor industry would just exploit that, putting the cheap scale panels into good-enough monitors. But even in the transition era, monitors were very different. Most affordable <32" TVs were 720p until well into the 2010s. I think the trend eventually reversed-- you started to see a lot of small 1080p TVs (back in the last few years you could even get small TVs) and I suspect it was because there were loads of 21-24" 1920x1080 monitor panels on the market.

cedilla 5y ago

Maybe some value a wider taskbar over one crammed to the side, even at the expense of 3.7% of their vertical space. Or they value their horizontal space more than you do, because they like have a few windows side by side. Or any other number of imaginable reasons.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
A vertical taskbar is particularly useful when running on a screen with few pixel-equivalents (bad eyesight, or low angular view), a lot of software tends to break when going under 720 or even 768 equivalent-lines, this makes it less likely for important bottom buttons to end up "outside" of the screen.

8note 5y ago

the corner is a useful place because i can get my mouse there without knowing where my mouse is Having something like the start button there ensures that nothing funky is being done to my pointer in the place where I'm looking for it

chris37879 5y ago
And if you move your start bar to the right, that button goes to the top right corner.

Epiphany21 5y ago

In my opinion it would be more logical to allow the entire task bar to shrink itself down into the Windows logo on the lefthand side like the MacOS 9 control strip. The user could then mouse over it or click it or use a certain key combination to restore it to the full screen width. Getting rid of terrible widescreen monitors as the industry standard might also help (there are Chinese companies dabbling with 3:2 displays, so the market is there). The 16:9 aspect ratio is used purely to increase yields and decrease material costs. If Microsoft is mandating a TPM, they might as well mandate a display aspect ratio that makes their desktop UI semi-usable.

hakfoo 5y ago
What surprises me is how little overlap you see between TV and monitor panels. I figured that there was a lot of crossover due to the NTSC/ATSC transition basically occuring simultaneously with the CRT/LCD switchover. The demand to replace every TV set in the country meant they'd be making a bazillion 16:9 panels in every price and size grade imaginable. The obvious assumption would be that the monitor industry would just exploit that, putting the cheap scale panels into good-enough monitors. But even in the transition era, monitors were very different. Most affordable <32" TVs were 720p until well into the 2010s. I think the trend eventually reversed-- you started to see a lot of small 1080p TVs (back in the last few years you could even get small TVs) and I suspect it was because there were loads of 21-24" 1920x1080 monitor panels on the market.