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As someone who mainly reads text (developer) I think widescreens are advantageous only for multimedia. As for the arguments about how human eyes are horizontal so our field of view is wide, that's true but only for peripheral vision - where everything is out-of-focus and not actually "visible" for e.g. reading something. Otherwise it's implying that humans can independently use one eye for the left side and one eye for the right, a skill that I don't know of anyone having (it's possible though, just not something that would be common.) I have a dual-monitor setup equivalent to a 5:2 aspect ratio and I still need to rotate my eyes or head horizontally to focus on the right part of the screens.

I don't know if a completely square monitor would be as well received as something at least slightly rectangular - 1920x1440 (4:3) might be a good compromise.

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My kingdom for a victorious return of 4:3 displays!

When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.

Pulling out my T42p retro laptop, with its 4:3 screen, always gives me the warm fuzzies. Love that aspect ratio.

Widescreen in the office is really good and has a huge advantage over 4:3 in one key aspect - When you halve the horizontal resolution (8:10 or 8:9, though 8:10 is better at it) you quite closely match what two normal A4/letter documents, inside word editing applications, cover. So you can place two text documents side-by-side and they fit reasonably well.

This is incredibly useful to a whole load of office employees, who want to refer to two word docs, or 1 word doc and 1 PDF, etc. This is where widescreens shine (and 16:10 is even better than 16:9) and why I think they've excelled well in the workplace.

I work with PDFs and docs most of the time, and I find that the best setup for viewing an A4-size PDF is a 4:3 monitor rotated 90 degrees.

A 16:10 monitor rotated 90 degrees (what I have right now) is OK, but it wastes space at the top and bottom that the 4:3 monitor would be using to zoom the document more.

A horizontal 16:10 monitor with two PDF's, as you mention, is too small for me (at least with my current 24 inch monitors). Caring for the eyes is essential when you're looking at on-screen PDFs all the day. I would probably like that layout with a 30" monitor though... although maximizing windows in two monitors is still more comfortable than tiling in one big monitor.

I sympathize, but a 30-inch widescreen monitor is probably easier to get hold of nowadays than a smaller one in a taller form factor.

If you're using Windows, here's a neat feature I went years without knowing: Windows key + left arrow arranges the window to occupy the left half of your monitor, and similarly with right arrow.

Also mathematicians. When writing math (in LaTeX), I have a text editor in one half of my screen and the compiled PDF in the other.

My current work setup is a Macbook Pro on the left, with two vertical 1920x1080 monitors center and right. I'm a web developer, and it's very nice for pretty much everything.

That's only true if you have only one monitor.

The last few places I've been have been strong supporters of dual monitors, so I might be in a bit of a thought bubble on that, but also because monitors have gotten dirt cheap so why not. You can get dual IPS for the price of a fancy office chair.

When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.

I’m seriously considering buying an LG 34UM95 monitor¹ for precisely this reason. It’s so wide (34" screen, 21:9 aspect ratio, 3440x1440 resolution) that I could sensibly divide the screen into 3-4 full-height columns with different source files open in each for development work.

Currently I have a decent Dell 30" as my main screen, but at 2560x1600 resolution I wind up using it with a 2x2 split for coding, which roughly halves the number of lines I can see at once in a long file.

I’m a little sceptical about trying a 1920x1920 screen at that physical size for similar work, simply because I’d worry about what prolonged use would do to my neck with that much vertical movement being needed all the time.

¹ http://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-34UM95

I've just set up 3 different work areas consisting of laptops with external second monitors. I've settled on the configuration having the external monitor above the laptop display as being the most optimum. I find that I never need to move my neck to glance from one screen to the other, and only require a slight tilt at the waist to comfortably switch for longer periods. Contrast this to a side-by-side configuration, where it feels awkward to merely shift my eyes sideways, so I move my neck more. This in itself isn't so bad, until I need to focus on one screen that's off-center for prolonged periods, keeping my head in an awkward angle that doesn't seem healthy. Naturally, any configuration should still be augmented with regular stretching/activity breaks.

tl;dr: Vertical: Mostly eye movement. Horizontal: Lots of neck movement.

The ultrawide LG is quite nice, I trialed a coworker's for a week or two. Beautiful screen and great features, and using it was interesting. It was really nice to have four or more full-height source files tiled. However, from my typical centered vantage point, windows near the corners appeared skewed. (They weren't physically skewed of course, this was just because of the angle I was viewing). I found myself rolling my chair left and right so that I could more closely center myself in front of the current window, which wasn't a big deal, just something I noticed myself doing.

Given proper resources, I'd consider getting one. Just wanted to share my funny anecdote that it's so large, I rolled back and forth to take advantage of it all :)

Thanks for sharing your experience.

However, from my typical centered vantage point, windows near the corners appeared skewed.

Presumably this is the advantage of the new curved screen version¹, though so far it’s considerably more expensive and it looks like at least here in the UK no-one has it available for immediate purchase.

¹ http://www.lg.com/uk/monitors/lg-34UC97

I really wish that manufacturers would start making decent laptops with 4:3 screens.

They call these 16:9 displays widescreen. I call them shallowscreen: they are just don't have th evertical space for work. Why are my work tools made with screen form factors that are only suitable for watching movies?

And yes, I love my T43, which has a lovely display and keyboard even though it is almost 10 years old. Alas, it is just underpowered today.

> When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.

Last time I completely rebuilt my home setup I got monitors that can be rotated into portrait. I've not used the facility nearly as much as I thought I would, but then again I've not done much development since so that might be why.

Having one portrait and one landscape seems to be idea for web development: portrait for coding and landscape for output (as that is what the user's will likely have) & the things that don't fit properly in 1080 pixels wide.

You don't want to large a monitor in portrait for coding though: you'll be looking down a lot (or up+down if you sit with your head centred) which might be quite bad for posture. Beyond a certain size you are probably better off with a large monitor and some UI hack to artificially split it into columns.

Rotate your monitor and work in 1200x1920.

I run two 1080p monitors in portrait on my desk at work. It's unreal how many interfaces assume you're widescreen: images are cut off abruptly after they scale to the width of the screen, horizontal scrollbars appear as default widths of panels in apps assume a widescreen monitor, and Excel spreadsheets flow off to the right. I'd love a 1920x1920 monitor.

1080 is absolutely not wide enough for today's software and web sites, but 1200 is mostly manageable. Anything that is too wide for 1200 either has too many columns as an attempt to use the absurd width of most monitors, or its lines of text are too long to be readable.

Another issue I had with a portrait monitor is, once you hit a certain size, you don't use the extra vertical real estate. You wind up moving your head up and down (mostly down) and you leave your head like that for a while sometimes. It's terrible for your back and neck, even standing.

>1080 is absolutely not wide enough for today's software and web sites

It certainly is. My browser is never even that wide now, and the only thing I ever run full screen is games.

I just made my browser window smaller in agreement with your comment.

It's not unreal for desktop apps to assume the user has a wide screen, every computer you buy has one!

Not everybody maximizes their windows, though.

Somewhat hard to do that with a laptop...

4:3 is about right for a laptop since you can't make them too "tall" or they'll become difficult to handle, much like books.

> When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.

It seems to me that a 16:9 monitor is exactly what you need -- rotated vertically. Get one that pivots!

> When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.

This sounds really weird to me. I absolutely relish the ability to have an editor and terminal side by side without either of them feeling "squeezed up". If you're using an IDE you can also get a lot more space for actual code even with those annoying side areas that IDEs tend to have.

With enough size and resolution, it really doesn't matter. After all, you can always use the space for something, right?

I recently upgrade to a 5k imac... and it's an absurd amount of space. I don't see the point in griping about aspect ratio when it's merely size and density that we really want.

Agreed. On a small notebook display I tend to work with one or a small few windows at a time, usually taking up most or all of the display area. Aspect ratio is highly relevant to my experience there and actually guides the aspect ratio of my windows.

But on a large desktop display, I end up with lots more windows at any one time, including lots of small windows that stay around and in one place for a long time: things like notes, feeds, things to come back to, etc. And, in that large space, I can size each window as large as I want, so I much more often can use a natural-feeling aspect ratio for its content. In other words, large displays are the only ones for me in which a "desktop metaphor" GUI actually feels and functions like a desktop. So, on a large display (aside from games/movies), I don't care too much about aspect ratio, I'll fill up the edges of whatever space I've got.

Agreed. I couldn't even tell you what my current wallpaper is because I'm never not working in full screen maximized windows.

My current fave monitor at home is my ca2008 Dell 2405 with all it's 1920x1200 glory. The Pixel is second, but a distant second because the screen is so small that if you actually use the full resolution you can't read a darn thing.

We have a 'horizontality' to our vision, not because our eyes are side-by-side, but because that's how we interact with the world; and how we grow up doing so[1]. We have a slightly narrower arc of vision vertically due to brow and cheek, but even so, the stuff we see 'up' and 'down' is low-density information.

What's happening in the sky or on the ceiling isn't particularly useful to us, and as long as we have reasonably sure footing, the same is true of the ground or floor. We spend our days interacting with things mostly in the horizontal visual plane. Things that we approach or that approach us mostly move in this plane as well.

[1] There were a few famous experiments a few decades ago showing that what we see as we grow up affects the development of the visual system: https://computervisionblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/cats-and...

Don't discount the value of screen space that's normally out in the nearer part of your peripheral vision, though. It's not as valuable as screenage that's normally in the centre of your vision, but it's still very useful (assuming it isn't too distorted by the viewing angle). You may have to move your eyes and maybe even slightly move your head to see what's out there clearly, but (I strongly assume - I'm not an expert) that kind of glancing should still be a lot more (yuck) "spatial" and less distracting than having to alt-tab or whatever to reveal the same information and then to hide it again. So in concrete terms, a 40" 16:9 4K monitor like http://www.tomshardware.com/news/philips-4k-bdm4065uc-monito... which has slightly greater vertical height than the 26.5" 1:1 1920×1920 screen as well as higher ppi ought to be preferable if price, horizontal desk space or whatever don't rule it out.

Unfortunately, OSes and other software tend to mess this up: in particular, the fact that those handy fullscreen commands actually fill the screen with the selected window or picture or video or whatever is no longer good news if some or all of the edges of your screen are far enough away from the comfortable centre area of your vision (see http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-large-display-paradox/ ). This was appropriate behaviour in the past, when both pixels and screen inches were limited and expensive and so it was safe to assume that the whole of the screen was well within the user's central viewing area—and in fact was probably covering much less of that central area than was at all ideal. Nowadays the user should be able to define a central fullscreen area that (possibly) doesn't take up the whole screen: then (by default etc.) fullscreened items should be expanded to the limits of the "fullscreen" area and no more. The rest of the screen can be filled with other information: maybe the other open windows pushed to the side in an OS X Exposé-like manner, or things like image metadata for a viewed image. The brightness of the outer area should be subdued to prevent it from distracting from the central image. (A practical use for whizzy translucency effects!). The information out in the "gutter" will be glanceable, but won't feel like it's impinging on your view of the fullscreened item (if it does, you didn't make the fullscreen area large enough).

I flat out love my 1920:1080 resolution - however, because of the IDE I use, I'm kind of tied to having panes down the sides of my code. A 4:3 sucks in this scenario, 1:1 would suck even more - if the resolution is not high enough. I would imagine that 1920:1920 would be awesome - vertical real estate is awesome for reading... but I don't want that at the cost of code navigation. My gut says that 1920:1920 would be sufficiently dense to get the best of both worlds.

I use 24" 1920x1200 for work and I would really, really enjoy x1440 (220 pixels more on Y) with the same screen width.

I also use 16:10 only. The dominance of 16:9 is really getting annoying. It's harder and harder to get 16:10 monitors these days, especially anything with higher resolution than 1920x1200.

Dell is coming out with a 25" 2560x1440 monitor; model u2515h.

http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/news_archive/32.htm#dell_u2515h

But it's in the opposite direction: it's even wider, not higher than 16:9

16 / 9 = 1.77

2560 / 1140 = 2.25

It's closer to today's CinemaScope: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CinemaScope "today it generally refers to any 2.35:1, 2.39:1, or 2.40:1"

Like provemewrong pointed out, 2560x1440 is 16:9. I also much prefer 1920x1200 over 1920x1080, but I find it's not so much a preference for 16:10 over 16:9, but rather 1080 simply isn't enough vertical space. I think a 25" 2560x1440 might be pretty nice.

  resolution    size    width x height  ppi
   2560x1440     25"    21.8" x 12.3"   117
   1920x1200     24"    20.4" x 12.7"    94
   1920x1080     24"    20.9" x 11.8"    92

It's 1440 not 1140. So it's still 16:9.

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