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Comment by edmond_dantes | Hacker News Reader

Developers have been complaining about the 1366x768 screen resolution in the Ars comments. Shouldn't developers be designing for (and on) the resolution the user is most likely be using?[1]

1: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/11/statcounter-finds-1366-x-...

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Not everyone is a frontend web developer, or any sort of frontent developer. I develop software to manage network attached storage, making my resolution pretty much irrelevant for testing my software. In fact, for the small amount of UI work that I do, I run it in a VM at 1024x768; the tiny resolution on this thing means that that would take up pretty much my whole display.

Furthermore, I like to be able to see my code and and the final product at the same time. In fact, I prefer to be able to have several columns of code, a terminal, a web browser, and my VM that I'm deploying my work to all visible at once. The more I can see, the better. I usually work with 3 1920x1080 monitors plus my laptop display, but sometimes need to use my laptop when I'm not at my desk. Being able to fit multiple columns of code and/or terminals on my screen at once is important to me.

Heck, these days, phones are coming with greater resolutions than that; you can't even fit your phone emulator on that display without scaling, if you develop mobile software. The Nexus 10 has 2560x1600 display on a 10 inch screen; why does a $400 tablet have such a better screen (its smaller dimension has more pixels than the XPS 13's larger!) than a $1500 laptop?

Aside from the poor resolution I also don't understand the price. I purchased a gaming laptop (ASUS G75VW) w/ 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, 750GB HDD, GTX 660m & 3610QM, which runs 1920x1080 for under $1400. This dell laptop has the specifications of my $400 Chromebook. It seems like it has been massively overpriced because it's one of the few machines that runs linux out of the box.

Tell me more about this $400 Chromebook with a 3GHz i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD.

If you only look at screen resolution, then his argument held (some) water.

I've got to admit, 768 vertical is a bit poor for developing.

I work on backend Linux systems, as do a huge percentage of Linux devs. Other people's screen resolution is irrelevant to me.

What does the resolution of an end user have to do with the desired resolution of a developer's machine? Each is accomplishing different tasks. Should you also program in an uncomfortable chair because many of your users will not be able to afford a quality one?

Shameless PSA: the Markus is the most comfortable chair I've ever owned.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00103102/

Its easy to make your browser resolution smaller. You can't make it bigger though.

There's a difference between developer and user. The developer is likely a multi-tasker looking at the design and code and images.

Part of my concern about a "720p" screen is remembering how some unresizable windows wouldn't even fit on the screen of my netbook and I would have to alt + drag them to get to the OK/Cancel buttons.

In 2012 most UIs are html driven and not native apps anymore that have been designed to fit some mostly used resolutions.

Most UI's or most web-based UIs?

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