> Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-restricted, but not the header [0]?
For extremely wide screens it obviously looks awkward, but the idea seems sound in principle.
IIRC, the reason you'd want to restrict width of content is that it's hard for your eyes to track back all the way left, to the start of the content, when you need to go down a line. But the header is just a single line, so it doesn't have this problem.
In the case of very wide screens they should probably restrict the header width too, just not quite as much.
The latter is objectively worse. I understand that > 1080p monitors are a small fraction of your user base, but that's still not reason to not test your UI on larger resolutions, for a site as big (and prominently used by devs with large screens) as GitHub.
My eye still has to jump back and forth long distances if I want to fork the repo for example.
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.
There are many many people who keep a single window maximized at all times and alt-tab between windows.
It's the most basic form of window management, and it works pretty well.
It's especially helpful if you want to be able to focus on one thing at a time only, and not have multiple different windows with disparate screen noise visible at once.
I often operate in that mode, using a tiling window manager to have a single maximized window on my primary monitor, and optionally a tile of auxiliary windows on my secondary monitor.
I agree. I will do side by side quite often when I'm programming or doing a specific multi-tasking work, but my "regular" browsing is fullscreen. I don't see why I would browse the web (single focused task) on the left or right half of my monitor, that just seems... silly?
I maximize the window height, but limit it in width precisely because so many websites aren't designed for wide screens. Windows makes this easy: just double click on the top or bottom edge of the window. It's also sticky, so I can easily drag it to the centre of the screen.
I'm in quite a small niche: tiling window managers. When there's only one window open it takes 100% width and height. Every app I use other than some websites handles this extra space well.
You can reduce it by making real or fake windows on the left and right. Haven't gotten around to making a macro for that yet. If it's an article reader mode also exists.
I do not maximize some of my applications because i want to have several of them visible at any time when i'm working on more than one. I do maximize some other applications, depending on what i'm doing. I do not maximize the browser because i want to have the content i'm working with/looking at/reading in front of me (especially on the reading aspect since reading long lines is tiresome) and maximizing on a 16:9 monitor means that a lot of content will be at the sides.
Now combine the above with the fact that i'm using a ~23" 1366x768 monitor, the tendency of pretty much every site out there to use the window width as a means to differentiate between mobile and desktop sites and the stupid trend to use ginormous font sizes everywhere and you get an idea of how much i like browsing many sites out there (at least HN and old Reddit is perfectly fine). Well, i'm thankful that browsers have a zoom option at least, many of the sites out there are only usable at a 70-80% zoom for me.
But yeah, last time i had my browser maximized all the time was when i had a 4:3 monitor.
There are better monitors at my local thrift store for 5 dollars. It's like 68ppi the last monitor I had like that
had a huge floppy drive and kings quest III.
No there are certainly not better monitors at your thrift store for $5 dollars.
This is a brand new monitor i bought some months ago (late 2019) and the cost was much bigger than 5 dollars. In fact it was the most expensive VA monitor at this resolution (i avoid IPS because i actually want to be able to see dark colors and contrast and every single IPS monitor i've used, regardless of resolution, is garbage when it comes to that with the awful backlight glow), it has a ton of inputs at the back, relatively fast response time (for VA), etc. It is one of the best monitors i ever had.
The resolution was something i explicitly opted for, partly because at the time i had an APU-based system that i wanted to game on and i didn't want the blurry mess that a higher resolution would have and partly because 1366x768 on a monitor (as opposed to laptop) makes for very sharp icons, fonts (after you disable antialiasing) for everything (as opposed to using a hidpi monitor where some apps look crisp and others look either too tiny or blurred from scaling). Also as a (very high) bonus, it looks great when playing older games that often use 1024x768 as a resolution since i have 1:1 mapping there.
Finally 1366x768 is currently by far the most common resolution on PCs (mainly thanks to laptops, but desktops use it too - see mine) according to statcounter and the second most common on gaming PCs according to Steam, so it isn't something you'd only find in obscure old PCs, it is as mainstream as it gets.
>1366x768 is currently by far the most common resolution on PCs
According to steam 10.9% of users are running at that resolution. Only 4% are running at worse and 85% are running at higher resolution mostly at 1080p at a whopping 65%. Calling it the second most common is true but deceptive is it just means that its so old that there are so many different better choices that people are spread out over the many and varied better choices.
If you mean that your apu is so weak that it can't do more than 720p and this would look bad at 1080p you are correct but that seems like a uniquely bad choice given that one would logically want to either get an actual gpu or give up on gaming and get a screen worth using instead of picking a compromise that is the worst of both worlds.
Regarding scalling 800x600 scales evenly to a 1920x1200 with black bars on the sides. 1152×900 scales to 1600x900 in the same fashion. You can also run the game in a window and avoid having to match it up evenly.
>1366x768 on a monitor (as opposed to laptop) makes for very sharp icons, fonts (after you disable antialiasing) for everything (as opposed to using a hidpi monitor where some apps look crisp and others look either too tiny or blurred from scaling).
I think your eyesight is bad.
Your PPI: 68
Common Resolution for your screen size: 95
Best in class: 191
> According to steam 10.9% of users are running at that resolution.
Which is why right after the part you quoted and apparently ignored, i wrote "and the second most common on gaming PCs according to Steam". Gaming PCs are more likely to have higher resolution, but not every PC is a gaming PC. Statcounter.com has 1366x768 above 1920x1080.
Also 10.9% of Steam's user is still around 10 million active users, which is a lot of people.
> but that seems like a uniquely bad choice
That is your opinion, i find it a great choice and i like my monitor.
> given that one would logically want to either get an actual gpu
I have an actual GPU nowadays.
> or give up on gaming
I do not think you are in position to tell anyone give up anything.
> and get a screen worth using
I find my monitor worth using.
> instead of picking a compromise that is the worst of both worlds.
That is your opinion that i disagree with.
> Regarding scalling 800x600 scales evenly to a 1920x1200 with black bars on the sides.
1920x1200 is not 16:9 which will cause either black bars or stretched UIs on actually new titles and videos, i wouldn't personally buy a non-16:9 monitor these days. Also 800x600 looks fine on my 1366x768 monitor centered (even if a bit smaller image) with 1:1 pixels.
> 1152×900 scales to 1600x900 in the same fashion.
Pretty much no game where you have to use fixed resolutions (mostly 2D games) uses 1152x900. Earlier 3D games work at 1366x768 by centering 1024x768 but almost all of them have workarounds to work at higher 4:3 resolutions (when i used a 1920x1080 monitor i often ran older 3D games at 1440x1080).
> You can also run the game in a window and avoid having to match it up evenly.
If i had Windows 7 or using Linux, perhaps, but with Windows 8+ and the forced compositor that adds input lag i avoid running games in a window.
> I think your eyesight is bad.
Yes it is, which is why i sit close to the monitor so i can see stuff (and the reason i prefer smaller monitors). But i can clearly see the pixels, which is what i mean with "sharp" here.
> Best in class: 191
Subjective and it has all the issues with scaling and blurring i mentioned in my last message.
By using some mobile specific pseudo-selector? There are pseudo-selectors for printing, there could be selectors for mobile too.
Not sure, i'm not into web development, i just see using the window width as the wrong way. I keep my window down to that size even when i'm using monitors with larger resolutions (1080p or 1440p), it is a bad idea to assume window width == monitor resolution == device type.
That's my feeling as well. I bought a large monitor with nice resolution and I want to run my applications at full size. Window tiling is nice but its also a distraction for me and I always seem to forget which app has focus.
I use a tiling window manager, meaning all windows combined take up 100% of the screen, and all of them are always visible.
The only UIs that never handle this correctly are modern, responsive websites which sometimes become unusable and show baffling design decisions at certain window sizes.
Although in the case of Reddit the old design isn't perfect either, because if the browser window is narrow enough it'll have a bug where you can shift the whole website out of the visible area by writing a long line in a comment.
To be clear, I know this is not a trivial thing, but when UI designers don't know how to handle certain viewport sizes they should rather just let the browser's scrollbars do the job they've been doing fine for decades.
For extremely wide screens it obviously looks awkward, but the idea seems sound in principle.
IIRC, the reason you'd want to restrict width of content is that it's hard for your eyes to track back all the way left, to the start of the content, when you need to go down a line. But the header is just a single line, so it doesn't have this problem.
In the case of very wide screens they should probably restrict the header width too, just not quite as much.