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Paper brochures reports and the such like are usually portrait format ....
Narrow text is easier to read than wide ...
Some (no many) users have so many toolbars on their screens that there is only a horisontal sliver of screen left for a site ..
So why do we have wide rather than tall monitors?
And why do we design sites generally to extend as landscape requiring vertical scrolling when the screen is wide .. rather than landscape sites.
Its just a comment really I am searching in my head for a new layout idea for a new site .. I dont like sticking with the same style and want to think through some different ones.
Anyone want to comment please feel free.
This is entirely supposition, based off looking at such things as panoramic cameras and the newer 16:9 video and picture formats, but I think it is because humans as a whole tend to look at things on 2 dimensional planes - namely left and right. Probably - or maybe (or maybe not at all as this is just a theory based off no facts ;-), monitors were designed with that in mind.
If not, my only other guess is it had something to do with memory storage or dot addressing due to row, column, pixel and cell sizes required for the early text based monitors.
- Robert
So why do we have wide rather than tall monitors?
Long time ago, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the best display mode was 80x24 characters. It's still used for some things.
To finish quickly, a 24 characters wide monitor would be unusable. When the high resolution became common it was already an stablished industry using landscape format.
Duckula "When the high resolution became common it was already an stablished industry using landscape format. "
That may be the case but we often end up adding columns that we dont need because we want to limit the width of text without opting for fixed width sites.... so we often want a portrait format for read ability ....
With landscape screens we then have above and below the fold issues and at least vertical scrolling .. yuk ..
On a side note, some version of XFree86, the GUI used on many unix systems, is capable of rotating the image 90 degrees, allowing you to turn your screen around and have a tall screen. The idea was very nice, but for some technical reason all hardware acceleration was lost, so things were kind of slow. Also, the screen tended to be more unstable with the swivel foot on the side :)
So you're not alone with the idea, Mark. People have tried in various ways.
You're absolutely right, though, that it is weird displays are wider than they are tall. I counter it a bit by not having by browser windows maximised. I keep them tall.
René.
Another idea (dont worry, I already reported them for this landscape problem ;-)...
I just realized this from doing some programming work... one big driving force in the advent of computers and monitors was data tabulation (and that word - "tabulation" - was even part of IBM's original name if memory serves)... and landscape is probably better suited for that. Most of the VIO (text based) screens I used for data listings and such (to maintain or quickly view or maintain data from our restaurant guide) are set to 200 columns by 40 rows. With a bunch of decent length fienlds in the tables I use, it's necessary. (Or I have lotsa scrolling to do).
Perhaps that had something to do with it... I know 123 woulda been unusable when it came out if the situation was reversed.
- Robert
I believe you are correct about the older Apples - though they all may have been Radius monitors. For a while (and still in some video card's cases) Radius was the only solution for either non 4x3 resolution or non landscape resolution.
The Radius monitors could also be rotated 90 degrees at will to change their orientation. Radius has since stopped making them, and last I saw, were the driving force behind 16x9 support as well as 9x16 support on Windoze and MAC for various video cards. Basically, they either write drivers or license their technology to OEM's.
On the other hand, OS/2 and eComStation allow it (portrait mode or 16x9 or any resolution supported by the hardware - OS/2 was written to support up to 32,768x32,768 - so the limits are still hardware based for it) with the standard SciTech Display Doctor - for which there is a version that runs under Windows, though I dont know if many people use it (while most OS/2 and eCS users do). The SDD driver has the advantage of being one driver, truly plug and play and capable of supporting more than the standard windows drivers.
- Robert
It is the hardware that is missing.
René.
AFAIK, all versions of Windows still have a design limit (software) that will not allow them to address very high resolutions. Not nearly as high (and I believe just barely greater than 1/10th of) the resolution that OS/2, eCS and most or all versions of *nix on the PC are capable of. Inotherwords, I feel sorry for the poor Windoze users out there when better hardware does come out.
I could be wrong and they may have addressed it in XP, but I severely doubt it.
- Rob
Radius was the only solution for either non 4x3 resolution or non landscape resolution.
My first "stand-alone" Mac monitor (after I moved from a Mac SE to IIsi) was a Radius Portrait. I kept it in Portrait mode almost all the time, with the exception of some spreadsheet work.
I was surprised the technology did not catch on - it worked well.
just turn the screen around and press a button to switch between landscape and portrait mode
That's exactly how the Radius worked - except it was even smarter. It would auto-sense when it had been rotated and switch into the appropriate display mode without any intervention.
I could be wrong and they may have addressed it in XP, but I severely doubt it.
Support for portrait/landscape (and flipping between) is a standard feature of "Windows XP Tablet PC edition", and in fact the new tablet PCs are usually illustrated with their screens in portrait mode, like a paper tablet.
"You can quickly rotate your screen for landscape or portrait viewing."
If this becomes a popular form factor, websites would definitely look different in the default portrait mode--especially sites with div's hard-coded to pixel widths.
(Don't know about support for ultra-density screens, but that's a bit of a way off yet.)
Looking at that Tablet PC, I notice there is one "security button" that does the job of CTRL-ALT-DELETE. He he.
I could be wrong and they may have addressed it in XP, but I severely doubt it.Support for portrait/landscape (and flipping between) is a standard feature of "Windows XP Tablet PC edition", and in fact the new tablet PCs are usually illustrated with their screens in portrait mode, like a paper tablet.
[microsoft.com...]
"You can quickly rotate your screen for landscape or portrait viewing."
If this becomes a popular form factor, websites would definitely look different in the default portrait mode--especially sites with div's hard-coded to pixel widths.
(Don't know about support for ultra-density screens, but that's a bit of a way off yet.)
Re: Ultra high resoltions...
Unless they rewrote much of the memory and driver handling subsystem, then no.
Re: portrait mode and monitor flipping...
And yes, WinXP does support portrait mode and even 16:9, but just like their dual and multi monitor support, it is all dependant on the card manufacturer for the support - thus, while of course a tablet PC will support what it needs to (I doubt any hardware manu is stupid enough to make a machine with unsupported hardware) it was with absolutely no help from MS.
Most of MS's "innovations" are theft or licensed. A few hundred code theft charges a year (usually settled), and licensed code for the rest.
For instance, Media Player that came with Win98 was "borrowed" from a German company called Team Computer (it was the video viewer that came with their multimedia editting software. Much of MS Money's functionality was "borrowed" from Intuit, their original disk compression was "borrowed" from Stac Electronics, their Win98 era disk tools were licensed from Intel and others. MS IE was bought from Spry. Every component from Office was "borrowed" or bought.
Their "graphics capabilities" (the stuff that actually runs the hardware) is no different at least according to some of their tech notes.
- Robert
