I see it often, and I hate it. It standardises on width, so everything that's wide (landscape oriented photos, or in this case desktop windows) gets shrunk dramatically.
In this particular case, it makes the largest viewports look the smallest, and makes the smallest ones look largest. It's indeed very deceptive.
Monitors are almost always wider than they are tall... using horizontal space makes a ton more sense. If such a small thing turns off a user, they're not seriously considering a different OS anyway.
Ooh I strongly dislike that effect on large monitors. It’s basically a waste where we distill the design down the lowest common denominator for 1024x768 screens (or whatever is current).
Facebook does the same thing. I don’t know why companies prefer the fixed width design. The original timeline design was SO compelling with photos filling the entire width of the screen.
Ewww what's with this terrible trend of wasting the majority of the screen space on a 16:9 monitor like this. Let it fit the window width, if someone needs it to be narrow let it adjust itself appropriately.
yea doesn't make sense. maybe they are using a small sized screen and are getting confused by that.
personally on a laptop i prefer 3:2 for most things but on a larger monitor i like 16:9 since you can have two programs side by side.
on a 16:9 smaller laptop screen, having things like two file browsers side by side works ok, but having programs with lots of ui, adobe premier or photoshop, not so much
Ditto. 3:2 is ok, 16:10 is pushing it, and 16:9 is getting into the absurd. Especially since most windowing UIs have fixed-size vertical elements, so eliminating 10% of the vertical pixels actually loses more than 10% of the usable space.
Do that many people use maximised windows on 16:9 or greater screens? Maybe it’s just because all my early experience was on 4:3, but I’d never maximise a browser window on a modern screen.
I’d agree this is bad design, but I’d be somewhat surprised if it’s a big practical problem for most people.
Nor does it make sense for a monitor. I can't remember ever wanting to arrange a bunch of windows as a square, a smaller square, a smaller square, etc.
Well, the thing is with `width: 9000px; max-width: 100%;` is that you know neither. And it forces people to use silly things like `padding` to maintain aspect ratio in e.g. embedded videos.
> It's like these people live in a parallel universe where most monitors aren't 16:9 or 16:10, thus wasting vertical space
I don't know. I use widescreen monitors, and yet I hate vertical task bars and much prefer "wasting" the vertical space. But I agree -- the user should be able to have whatever arrangement they prefer.
Sadly that seems to be a trend. Sites started to assume that your screen is taller than it is wide a while back.
It might be a combination of designers and writers working on large monitors, having multiple tall narrow windows open, and people using iPads in portrait mode.
Users of 11" and 13" laptops seems to have been forgotten in this new design trend.
"Has a non-standard window size" still really narrows the search space, and there's still your desktop resolution that might be super unique if you have a laptop and a desk monitor at an offset.
Literally everyone, besides you, in this HN thread is commenting on how it's a good solution and gives more screen real estate while maintaining the aspect ratio. The only people complaining about it, including you, haven't really specified what about it is unappealing.
Couldn't care less about common display formats resulting from the constraints of
historical tv and cinema technology, and the paths those have set for mass production of panels for 'consuming' media.
Every time I've upgraded my monitor, I've found it easier. If you don't want a window to be wider than a certain point, don't make it wider. Myself, whenever I see apple users, I see them with these tiny narrow windows with nothing else on screen, which I have never understood.
That said, I always value vertical resolution - I have never bought a 1920x1080 monitor as 1600x1200 is so much nicer, or 1920x1200 for the wider aspect ratio.
Manufactures like it because they get to put a bigger number (measured by inches diagonally) on widescreen monitors compared to a 4:3 monitor with the same area (measured by width*height).
But we're doing the disservice to ourselves when we buy it, so your point still stands.
In this particular case, it makes the largest viewports look the smallest, and makes the smallest ones look largest. It's indeed very deceptive.
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