Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Case For Flipping Your Monitor From Landscape to Portrait

Posted by timothy on from the makes-it-hard-to-type dept.

Molly McHugh writes The vast majority of computer-related tasks see no benefit from a screen that is longer than it is tall. Sure, video playback and gaming are some key exceptions, but if you watch Netflix on your TV instead of your computer monitor and you're not into PC gaming, that long, wide display is doing nothing but hampering your experience. Let's flip it. No, seriously. Let's flip it sideways.

7 of 567 comments (clear)

  1. Have Both by PvtVoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have two monitors: one landscape, one next to it flipped into portrait mode. It's not fucking rocket science.

    1. Re:Have Both by B33rNinj4 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Same here. I've found that both fit my needs for my work. Plus, it's great to have a restaurant menu up on my portrait monitor.

  2. Depends by Bigbutt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I manage Unix systems so having it be wide screen helps with longer lines.

    But I also write code so having a portrait screen helps when I'm reading documentation (PDFs for example).

    So I have a four monitor setup. Two Landscape (one reversed above my number 1 landscape monitor) and Two Portrait; one to the left and one to the right of the two center monitors. Works well for web browsing and coding where I want more side to side screen space and gaming and works well when coding and I need directories to the left and pdfs to the right. The top screen has my debugger or Firebug if I'm working on a web page.

    [John]

    --
    Shit better not happen!
  3. Re:View angles by Squapper · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All monitors are made to be viewed landscape. It's about biology. Our eyes are by nature more accustomed to view wide scenes instead of tall ones. If you feel like flipping your monitor to a vertical format, you probably have a too small monitor. With a properly sized widescreen monitor, two webpages fit nicely side-by-side. Who maximizes browser windows nowdays anyway?

  4. Don't by zmooc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So because web designers fail to properly design the web and thus leave me with ridiculously narrow columns, I should rotate my monitor? That's rubbish. Scientific research has shown again and again that we can read longer lines much more efficiently than we can read short lines, even though our subjective experience is often to the contrary. Just fix those websites and keep your monitor in landscape. Thank you.

    --
    0x or or snor perron?!
  5. Re: You're Doing It Wrong by hawkeyeMI · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are various apps that will help you mimic a tiling window manager on Windows and OSX, by stuffing windows into pre-defined areas on the monitor. They don't work great. I looked and looked for proper tiling window managers like i3 on Windows. They just don't exist. There have been several attempts but they all seem to be abandoned. I had decent success with Divvy on Windows, for what it's worth, but I prefer i3/linux on my 39" 4K SEIKI display. Landscape. Honestly i find the article a bit dumb. Windows even lets you snap windows into half the display by dragging to the edge these days.

    --
    Error 404 - Sig Not Found
  6. VVS by fox171171 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sure, video playback and gaming are some key exceptions

    Well, with all the tards with VVS, I suppose even video is not always an exception either.

    Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    You're not shooting that right dummy!