I'm kind of surprised here, myself, and am very interested in seeing real numbers because, just from the replies to this comment I'm seeing a lot of difference of opinion.
Personally, I always use a browser full screen and most everything else is 'windowed'. My browser usually ends up being the "background" of my monitor, only traded out when I'm writing code, in which case my IDE is the "background" (full screen). Everything else except games runs in a smaller window. Dragging and dropping still works, like that. It's just really convenient.
From mostly working with other devs, this is usually what I see. This is how I see MOST people use their desktops. Full screen browser, always. Then we get to this article and this comment section and people are talking like it's a given that MOST people use their browsers in windowed mode. Personally, the only time I can even remember someone doing that is when they snap it to an area and then snap something else beside it.
My suspicion is this is a Windows/Linux vs Mac thing? Everything in Mac defaults to "floating" app windows, instead of defaulting to a single app window, maximized, with sub-panel windows inside the app renderer. So people just kind of mentally map it that way, depending on the OS? But then, that's just a guess!
Obviously, I don't mean to imply that one way is better or worse. I'm just kind of intrigued by how blindsided I - and apparently others - are about this.
Anyway, you're right about the article's hand-waving. It's not as compelling to me, because I've had users file tickets when our "anything past 1060px gets centered on the screen, instead of expanding to fill" method was displayed on a 4K screen. They claimed it was "unusable", even though it was entirely the same, it just didn't expand as much as they would have like (yes, even on a TV; other users were using it just fine). So I don't think anything past 800 is less worth consideration. At the very least, I'd say that number is more like 960 or 1400. The upper end of standard desktop sizes instead of the lower. At 800px width, even default browser font sizes look big. Scaling down to a 10 or 11px font size is fine for complex utilities, but when you're trying to size it for big, finger-sized buttons, 800px gets cramped, fast.
Personally, I always use a browser full screen and most everything else is 'windowed'. My browser usually ends up being the "background" of my monitor, only traded out when I'm writing code, in which case my IDE is the "background" (full screen). Everything else except games runs in a smaller window. Dragging and dropping still works, like that. It's just really convenient.
From mostly working with other devs, this is usually what I see. This is how I see MOST people use their desktops. Full screen browser, always. Then we get to this article and this comment section and people are talking like it's a given that MOST people use their browsers in windowed mode. Personally, the only time I can even remember someone doing that is when they snap it to an area and then snap something else beside it.
My suspicion is this is a Windows/Linux vs Mac thing? Everything in Mac defaults to "floating" app windows, instead of defaulting to a single app window, maximized, with sub-panel windows inside the app renderer. So people just kind of mentally map it that way, depending on the OS? But then, that's just a guess!
Obviously, I don't mean to imply that one way is better or worse. I'm just kind of intrigued by how blindsided I - and apparently others - are about this.
Anyway, you're right about the article's hand-waving. It's not as compelling to me, because I've had users file tickets when our "anything past 1060px gets centered on the screen, instead of expanding to fill" method was displayed on a 4K screen. They claimed it was "unusable", even though it was entirely the same, it just didn't expand as much as they would have like (yes, even on a TV; other users were using it just fine). So I don't think anything past 800 is less worth consideration. At the very least, I'd say that number is more like 960 or 1400. The upper end of standard desktop sizes instead of the lower. At 800px width, even default browser font sizes look big. Scaling down to a 10 or 11px font size is fine for complex utilities, but when you're trying to size it for big, finger-sized buttons, 800px gets cramped, fast.
But yeah, the overall advice holds.
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