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Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most don't). My (multiple) browser windows on my very

Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most don't). My (multiple) browser windows on my very big wide screen are all roughly in 4:3 ~square shape and top tabs make a lot more sense. And unless you have a browser full of tabs, vertical tab lists usually have massive amounts of purely wasted white space and are generally much less space efficient overall. Every once in a while I wouldn't mind for a specific window to have vertical tabs with nested tabs, as a psuedo live-bookmark organization system for a current project. But it's not a daily driver for me.

pbmonster 1y ago
> Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most don't). Are you kidding? I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. Using the drag-and-drop feature that splits the screen between two GUIs already marks the office power user, a third windows on a single screen brings us into the territory of the hardcore nerds running tiling window managers.
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. I've never had my browser in fullscreen unless it's media content. I too prefer tabs at top than to the side, as I have four screens, 2x32' and 2x27' -- having the tabs at the top of my top screen feels more natural.
- bombela 1y ago
  It used to be possible to run web pages and applications not full screen. But moderne UIs are so wasteful of space, with massive icons, it has become almost impossible.
- jacobyoder 1y ago
  > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. 99% of the folks I interact with usually just use whatever size the browser opens in initially, then maybe resize it if they're reading for a while, or need to see more info. If half a pic shows up, they might try to fumble to grab a handle to resize to see more of the pic; sometimes it works, sometimes they end up giving up. Going 'full screen' may be different than just 'as wide and tall as the monitor', because 'full screen' mode gets rid of the window chrome, which causes confusion. The only folks I know who consistently use browsers 'full screen' are on mobile devices where that's generally the only option.
  - vips7L 1y ago
    Do you interact with a lot of people using macs? I find that Mac users don’t maximize their windows. They leave them cluttered everywhere; all the people I know on Windows maximize their windows.
    - criley2 1y ago
      Do you have a tiny monitor? I find that people with small mointors maximize their windows because they have to. I have a 27" widescreen. The idea of maximizing a browser window is absurdity. My monitor can comfortably show three websites side by side. The amount of wasted white space on a full screen website would approach 90%. Here's this very post fullscreened (without a taskbar). What a wild waste of space and the content is clearly not designed to be viewed like this, with the UX being located at the top left lol. https://i.imgur.com/NPxks8b.png https://i.imgur.com/NPxks8b.png
      - vips7L 1y ago
        No I have the same size monitor. I don’t think HN is the best website to choose to make your point though.
        criley2 1y ago
        Ok here's another one, a news site. https://i.imgur.com/4s6Jzvn.png https://i.imgur.com/4s6Jzvn.png What does having 60% of my screen be purple do for me? Why would you choose that?
        vips7L 1y ago
        Because that is clearly not the norm for webpages? You're picking deliberate low-tech html pages. HN and memeorandum are not representative of the internet at large. Honestly, man I don't care for this conversation. You do you bae. I was merely offering an observation of what I've seen from people and you're not even talking about that.
- rascul 1y ago
  > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. Do you mean maximized? I might agree if you do. I almost never see browsers full screen except when playing videos.
- ShadowBanThis03 1y ago
  The only things I run full-screen on a big monitor are drawing programs and development tools.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  > I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. I have no idea what the statistics are, but I certainly never run the browser fullscreen and I rarely see others do so.
- Lvl999Noob 1y ago
  FWIW, I run my browser full screen. I run most apps full screen. By full screen, I don't mean that weird macos thing where it removes everything and locks you into a single app in a single workspace but the more standard one where the window is just expanded to fill the screen space. The only time I run an app without fullscreen-ing it is if I don't have to do much in it or it doesn't have enough content to use up all the space anyways. Like system settings. Otherwise, I am using the app -> I am focusing on it -> I want it to take all the space it wants and show me everything going on inside it. My browser and my text editor are apps where I spend 99% of my time so they are always full screen.
panzi 1y ago
People don't maximize their windows? I have a 16:9 4k monitor and I maximize everything (browser, IDE, image editor, terminal, mail client) except for the rare occasion when I need something viewed side by side (editor+browser, terminal+browser, 2 file browsers, etc.).
- _flux 1y ago
  Is the web not a terrible experience in 16:9? My main browser window is closer to 1:1, and even then I have tabs on the left.
  - rascul 1y ago
    It's not.
  - dotancohen 1y ago
    One of my monitors is 9:16 - I've rotated it 90°. It's terrific for reading PDF documents, web pages, a terminal, and the IDE. The only thing it's not really good for is the email client, video, and pictures. For those I have another monitor in the standard landscape configuration.
    - _flux 1y ago
      I used to have a similar setup, but I replaced the dual head setup (24" 9:16 and 30" 16:9) with one ultrawide one. I suppose just as wide 16:9 display would have been even nicer, but it's fine. There are some benefits in window placement in having just a single screen, even if window managers could work better for this use (e.g. have a "second screen" region where there are separate workspaces).
  - qingcharles 1y ago
    I run everything maximized on my 32:9 and it's fine to me. (I've never had overlapping windows in my life -- I find seeing more than one thing super distracting and it annoys me that this seems to be the default on Macs)
  - 1y ago
vladvasiliu 1y ago
> And unless you have a browser full of tabs, vertical tab lists usually have massive amounts of purely wasted white space and are generally much less space efficient overall. The Firefox and Edge implementations have a collapsible panel for the vertical tabs. I agree if they didn't, it would be worse than horizontal tabs. However, my pet peeve is that it's now impossible to disable tabs altogether, say when using a tiling WM that implements tabbing itself, controllable with the usual shortcuts. Firefox has an extension that always moves tabs to a separate window, but it's janky.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  > my pet peeve is that it's now impossible to disable tabs altogether Yeah, being able to do that would be really nice.

pbmonster 1y ago

> Having a widescreen monitor is irrelevant to me unless I fullscreen my browser (which I don't and I assume most don't). Are you kidding? I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. Using the drag-and-drop feature that splits the screen between two GUIs already marks the office power user, a third windows on a single screen brings us into the territory of the hardcore nerds running tiling window managers.

doublerabbit 1y ago
> I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. I've never had my browser in fullscreen unless it's media content. I too prefer tabs at top than to the side, as I have four screens, 2x32' and 2x27' -- having the tabs at the top of my top screen feels more natural.
bombela 1y ago
It used to be possible to run web pages and applications not full screen. But moderne UIs are so wasteful of space, with massive icons, it has become almost impossible.
jacobyoder 1y ago
> I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. 99% of the folks I interact with usually just use whatever size the browser opens in initially, then maybe resize it if they're reading for a while, or need to see more info. If half a pic shows up, they might try to fumble to grab a handle to resize to see more of the pic; sometimes it works, sometimes they end up giving up. Going 'full screen' may be different than just 'as wide and tall as the monitor', because 'full screen' mode gets rid of the window chrome, which causes confusion. The only folks I know who consistently use browsers 'full screen' are on mobile devices where that's generally the only option.
- vips7L 1y ago
  Do you interact with a lot of people using macs? I find that Mac users don’t maximize their windows. They leave them cluttered everywhere; all the people I know on Windows maximize their windows.
  - criley2 1y ago
    Do you have a tiny monitor? I find that people with small mointors maximize their windows because they have to. I have a 27" widescreen. The idea of maximizing a browser window is absurdity. My monitor can comfortably show three websites side by side. The amount of wasted white space on a full screen website would approach 90%. Here's this very post fullscreened (without a taskbar). What a wild waste of space and the content is clearly not designed to be viewed like this, with the UX being located at the top left lol. https://i.imgur.com/NPxks8b.png https://i.imgur.com/NPxks8b.png
    - vips7L 1y ago
      No I have the same size monitor. I don’t think HN is the best website to choose to make your point though.
      - criley2 1y ago
        Ok here's another one, a news site. https://i.imgur.com/4s6Jzvn.png https://i.imgur.com/4s6Jzvn.png What does having 60% of my screen be purple do for me? Why would you choose that?
        vips7L 1y ago
        Because that is clearly not the norm for webpages? You're picking deliberate low-tech html pages. HN and memeorandum are not representative of the internet at large. Honestly, man I don't care for this conversation. You do you bae. I was merely offering an observation of what I've seen from people and you're not even talking about that.
rascul 1y ago
> I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. Do you mean maximized? I might agree if you do. I almost never see browsers full screen except when playing videos.
ShadowBanThis03 1y ago
The only things I run full-screen on a big monitor are drawing programs and development tools.
JohnFen 1y ago
> I'm willing to bet 99% of users run their browsers fullscreen. I have no idea what the statistics are, but I certainly never run the browser fullscreen and I rarely see others do so.
Lvl999Noob 1y ago
FWIW, I run my browser full screen. I run most apps full screen. By full screen, I don't mean that weird macos thing where it removes everything and locks you into a single app in a single workspace but the more standard one where the window is just expanded to fill the screen space. The only time I run an app without fullscreen-ing it is if I don't have to do much in it or it doesn't have enough content to use up all the space anyways. Like system settings. Otherwise, I am using the app -> I am focusing on it -> I want it to take all the space it wants and show me everything going on inside it. My browser and my text editor are apps where I spend 99% of my time so they are always full screen.

panzi 1y ago

People don't maximize their windows? I have a 16:9 4k monitor and I maximize everything (browser, IDE, image editor, terminal, mail client) except for the rare occasion when I need something viewed side by side (editor+browser, terminal+browser, 2 file browsers, etc.).

_flux 1y ago
Is the web not a terrible experience in 16:9? My main browser window is closer to 1:1, and even then I have tabs on the left.
- rascul 1y ago
  It's not.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  One of my monitors is 9:16 - I've rotated it 90°. It's terrific for reading PDF documents, web pages, a terminal, and the IDE. The only thing it's not really good for is the email client, video, and pictures. For those I have another monitor in the standard landscape configuration.
  - _flux 1y ago
    I used to have a similar setup, but I replaced the dual head setup (24" 9:16 and 30" 16:9) with one ultrawide one. I suppose just as wide 16:9 display would have been even nicer, but it's fine. There are some benefits in window placement in having just a single screen, even if window managers could work better for this use (e.g. have a "second screen" region where there are separate workspaces).
- qingcharles 1y ago
  I run everything maximized on my 32:9 and it's fine to me. (I've never had overlapping windows in my life -- I find seeing more than one thing super distracting and it annoys me that this seems to be the default on Macs)
- 1y ago

vladvasiliu 1y ago

> And unless you have a browser full of tabs, vertical tab lists usually have massive amounts of purely wasted white space and are generally much less space efficient overall. The Firefox and Edge implementations have a collapsible panel for the vertical tabs. I agree if they didn't, it would be worse than horizontal tabs. However, my pet peeve is that it's now impossible to disable tabs altogether, say when using a tiling WM that implements tabbing itself, controllable with the usual shortcuts. Firefox has an extension that always moves tabs to a separate window, but it's janky.

JohnFen 1y ago
> my pet peeve is that it's now impossible to disable tabs altogether Yeah, being able to do that would be really nice.