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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.

34 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. Re:Have Both by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

      I use my monitor rotated in portrait mode and rotated 270 degrees.

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    3. Re:Have Both by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I use my monitor rotated in portrait mode and rotated 270 degrees.

      I've rotated my screen 360 degrees :-)

      "The vast majority of computer-related tasks see no benefit from a screen that is longer than it is tall."

      Seriously, most of todays screens are so big that you can fit 2 pages side-by-side, which is a lot more convenient than one page at a time in portrait mode. Ditto for individual windows. Rotating them into portrait mode will cause neck strain as you have to tilt your head back to properly see the top.

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    4. Re: Have Both by SLi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would do this at work for writing code, but alas, I currently work on Windows, and its support for portrait monitors, let alone landscape+portrait, is broken enough that the path of least pain is just to use landscape alone.

      Specifically, there seems to be no way to get proper antialiased fonts in portrait mode. While ClearType makes Windows fonts quite tolerable, it doesn't (and arguably can't) work in portrait mode. Traditional antialiasing could work, but for some inexplicable reason Windows disables it for a large range of font sizes (something like 7..13).

      Even worse, you can either use ClearType on all of your monitors or none of them. On portrait monitors Windows, when using ClearType, still renders the fonts as if it was landscape; the result is an incredibly blurry, colored mess. So if you have one portrait monitor, you have to tolerate aliased fonts on all of your displays.

    5. Re:Have Both by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I've rotated my screen 360 degrees :-)

      Does it improve the picture now that you have twisted cables?

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    6. Re: Have Both by wbo · · Score: 4, Informative

      ClearType / Subpixel font rendering works just fine on my Windows 7 PC with 1 24" monitor in landscape and another 24" rotated in portrait.

      It didn't work for some reason when I had a fairly old ATI/AMD graphics card (It didn't take into account the rotation of the portrait monitor), But when I replaced the card with a mid-range nVidia card the problem went away. My guess is the ATI graphics driver wasn't properly reporting the orientation and pixel layout information received from the monitor.

      I have seen some (usually cheap) monitors that don't appear to have an option in their menu to set their orientation. My guess is ClearType probably wouldn't work properly on them since the DDC information would be incorrect when rotated, but that is more of a problem with the monitor than Windows.

    7. Re:Have Both by Ottibus · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've rotated my screen 360 degrees :-)

      Does it improve the picture now that you have twisted cables?

      Make sure you rotate by -360 degress in the Southern Hemisphere or the electrons will get tangled.

    8. Re:Have Both by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://www.corecommunication.ca/4-studies-which-show-that-using-a-second-monitor-can-boost-productivity/

      There's 4 for you. Generally I believe it's more monitor space is what's more productive, not just having two.

    9. Re: Have Both by nbauman · · Score: 3

      Yes, Henry Dreyfuss figured that out. A lot of aircraft cockpits and control panels look like his templates.

      http://www.learneasy.info/MDME...

      http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5Hl9...

      His recommendation was that the optimum viewing range went from the horizon to 30 degrees below the horizon. Your eyes can move comfortably from about 25 degrees above the horizon to 35 degrees below the horizon.

      I used to use them back in the days of India ink and T squares.

  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]

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    1. Re:Depends by landoltjp · · Score: 5, Funny

      I just got turned on by this.

    2. Re:Depends by rogermcdodger · · Score: 3, Informative

      Many monitors have a larger bezel on the bottom. By flipping the top one it reduces non-screen space between the two.

  3. You're Doing It Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The examples show lots of web sites in a maximized browser window. I use my widescreen monitor in landscape mode so I can have multiple windows simultaneously visible side-by-side. The examples are doing it poorly!

    1. Re:You're Doing It Wrong by jeffmflanagan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The examples show lots of web sites in a maximized browser window. I use my widescreen monitor in landscape mode so I can have multiple windows simultaneously visible side-by-side. The examples are doing it poorly!

      Yep. The biggest use I get out of wide monitors is working on two things at once on a single display. This way I can get everything done on one display while I watch TV or movies on my second monitor. It would be nice to have a 3rd display that's in portrait mode.

    2. Re:You're Doing It Wrong by Matheus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If normal users could watch multiple pr0n side-by-side they totally would.

    3. 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.

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    4. Re: You're Doing It Wrong by Immerman · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually as I recall that's an included behavior in Windows 7 at least - drag a window to one edge of the screen and it "semi-maximizes" to fill that half. Tweakable in whatever settings screen lets you drag a window to the top of the screen to maximize. (Not using Windows at the moment, so can't test)

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  4. View angles by MrLogic17 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some monitors are make to be viewed landscape, and when rotated have horrible view angles.
    I found some at work where the view angle was so bad, only one eye would get a good picture, while the other eye showed a faded & discolored image. Rubber-necking around would find a small sweet spot for viewing.

    TLDR; doesn't work well on some monitors.

    1. Re:View angles by jandrese · · Score: 4, Informative

      In general: avoid TN displays if you intend to rotate the screen. IPS displays are much better for this.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    2. Re:View angles by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And here's the comment I was looking for. Monitors aren't designed to be placed into portrait mode. They completely suck. Each eye sees different brightnesses and colours. It's truly awful unless you're one of those people that doesn't mind a distorted image. You probably have your widescreen TV in 4:3 to 16:9 stretch mode at home too.

  5. Everything old is new again by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Portrait monitors were all the rage back in the 90's. All the desktop publishing people used them for working with Aldus Pagemaker.

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  6. Oh, I see. by wisnoskij · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So if we ignore many different and popular reasons to use a computer then portrait comes out on top.

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  7. 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.

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  8. Help! by berchca · · Score: 3, Funny

    Okay, I've managed to get the monitor off my laptop (it must have been stuck; I had to pry it off). Can someone tell me how to re-attach it as portrait?

    1. Re:Help! by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Funny

      JB Weld.

  9. Sigh by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My eyes are aligned horizontally, not vertically.

    Sure, I can make the case for more vertical space. But not at the expense of horizontal.

    The only thing we use vertically is paper, and that's because we rarely consider the whole page in one go - only caring about one half at a time. And that makes it two pieces of landscape A5.

    Books are portrait, I'll give you that. But you unfold them into a landscape A5-ish or large book with multiple columns (because of the difficulty of printing very near the gutter in the middle).

    Children's picture books? Almost all landscape.
    Movies? Landscape.
    Photographs? Mostly landscape and certainly specified in landscape size and cameras are mostly designed for landscape operation (except when making portraits - for which we shockingly use them portrait!)

    You have two eyes, one left, one right. Together they focus on the object of interest.

    If you want a BIGGER landscape monitor so you can put a full A4 piece of paper on it - do that. Get it in landscape format and it will be wide enough to visualise two pieces at the same time at full height. That's not true if you flip the portrait/landscapes in those sentences.

    Portrait displays have specific and specialised uses. And almost all of them leave horizontal space in everyone's visions (sometimes for a purpose, e.g. portraits without lots of side-art on them, sometimes because of cost - airport displays not being wider than necessary). If you fill that horizontal space, you get a landscape display of the same height that is suited for all purposes.

    I can't see the case for portrait monitors for ordinary desktops at all except to "be different" or in very specialised applications where a landscape monitor of the same height will do twice as much.

  10. Stop using windows full screen by Macdude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the author of this piece was smart enough to stop using windows full-screen, he'd realise that it's very useful to be able to view (at least partially) multiple windows at the same time.

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  11. The case for not: by Culture20 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Subpixels orient horizontally.

  12. Snap: Tiling window manager in Windows 7+ by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Setting a system so that 'maximize' only expands a window to fill half of your giant wide screen

    In Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, pressing Win+Left or Win+Right (or dragging a window's title bar to the left or right edge) will "Snap" it, which expands it to fill half the screen. In previous versions of Windows, you could do something similar by clicking one window's title in the taskbar, Ctrl+right-clicking another, and choosing Tile Vertically.

  13. Re:Read one, write other by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I guess you've never seen a regular web user. They don't write documents at the same time they're reading a website.

    They just read websites.

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  14. 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!

  15. Line length and eye movement error by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    Scientific research has shown again and again that we can read longer lines much more efficiently than we can read short lines

    Up to a point. True, 75 columns are better than 25. But the research I've read concludes that line lengths past 80 columns (roughly 36-40em) cause the reader to accidentally skip or repeat lines more often.

  16. Re:Read one, write other by gbjbaanb · · Score: 3

    but I use Windows 8 you insensitive clod!