On a screen as big as this, I certainly wouldn't want a text area that spans 50% of the screen width. It's OK if you are editing html it's fine, but for WYSIWYG

On a screen as big as this, I certainly wouldn't want a text area that spans 50% of the screen width. It's OK if you are editing html it's fine, but for WYSIWYG you are going to have so seriously drawn out paragraphs. By the way, I read somewhere that 600px width was the sweet spot for a block of text, in terms of readability. (For the height however, I agree the layout is totally stupid.)