Is the recent trend toward widescreen (16:9) computer monitors a plus or minus for programmers?

Question

It's almost gotten to the point where you can't buy a conventional (4:3) monitor anymore. Pretty much everything is widescreen. This is fine for watching movies or TV, but is it good or bad for programming?

My initial thoughts on the issue are that widescreens are a net negative for programmers. Here are some of the disadvantages I see:

Poor space utiliziation

One disadvantage of widescreens you can't argue with is that they offer poor space utilization for the amount of total pixels you get. For example, my Thinkpad, which I bought just before the widescreen craze, has a 15" monitor with a native resolution of 1600 x 1200. The newer 15.4" Thinkpads run at most 1680 x 1050. So (if you do the math) you get fewer pixels in a wider (but not shorter) package. With desktop monitors, you pay a price in terms of desk space used. Two 1680 x 1050 monitors will simply take up more of your desk than two 1600 x 1200 monitors (assuming equal dot pitch).

More scrolling

If you compare a 1680 x 1050 monitor to a 1600 x 1200 monitor, you get 80 extra pixels of width but 150 fewer pixels of height. The height reduction means you lose approximately 11 lines of code. That's less you can see on the screen at one time and more scrolling you have to do. This harms productivity, maybe not dramatically, but insidiously.

Less room for wide panels

Widescreens also mean you lose space for wide but short panels common in programming environments. If you use Visual Studio, for example, your code window will be that much shorter when viewing the Find Results, Task List, or Error List (all of which I use frequently). This isn't to say the 80 pixels of extra width you get with widescreen would never be useful, but I tend to keep my lines of code short, so seeing more lines would be more valuable to me than seeing fewer, longer lines.

What do you think?

Do you agree/disagree? Are you now using one or more widescreen monitors for development? What resolution are you running on each? Do you ever miss the height of the traditional 4:3 monitor? Would you complain if your monitors were one inch narrower but two inches taller?

Answer 1

This is why you buy wide-screen monitors that you can orient vertically for your desktop.

I don't see the problem really - I get a full size keyboard on my laptops, and enough space to put two editors side by side on my desktops.

Answer 2

It is much easier to scroll vertically than horizontally.

Answer 3

1) Rotating monitors.

These negate almost all of the problems you describe. Most of the folks I work with have 19" widescreen monitors, and usually one or both have been rotated into the vertical position. This gives them increased room for everything.

2) Tool panels.

Many IDEs these days have the ability to move tool panels to any side of the screen. I find that I keep more of them open with my widescreen monitors than without, including search results or errors.

3) Tabs.

The wider the monitor, the more tabs you get to see. This is a good thing.

4) Larger monitors.

You can obtain the same kind of vertical space as you could before, but you simply need to get a larger monitor. I moved up to a 24" widescreen to maintain the 1200 pixel height for my primary display at home, and don't regret it one bit. I look forward to getting a 30" sometime in the future, so I can have at least 1600 pixels in height. Ideally, this would even let me have two entire editor windows open on one screen (and with windows 7, that would be a breeze).

5) Tough luck.

Widescreen monitors are here to stay. Our eyes are better able to absorb more information horizontally than they are vertically, so this transition will benefit humankind overall in the long run. Sit back, enjoy the ride!

Answer 4

I use a 24" Dell monitor at home with Win7. When I want to fake dual screens I just pop two windows next to each other with the cool new Win7 window snap features. Done.

Answer 5

Yes, widescreen monitors are worse for development.

You need at least 1024 pixels across, so your screen matches your users.

After that, you need as many lines of code as you possibly can fit on your screen.

You can get lots of code if you take a widescreen monitor and orient it in portrait mode, but then you need a version of type antialiasing that supports vertical subpixels, which Windows doesn't.

Ah well, it sucks, but at least monitors are cheap. Buy two!

Answer 6

One benefit of wide-screen is that one can easily have two code files open side by side. For example, in Visual Studio and using TestDriven.NET, I typically have my unit tests open in one tab group, and the code under test open in another tab group. So I can work on the testee code in the left hand pane, but have the tests readily to hand so I can right-click one and run it -- no need to swap to another tab first.

Answer 7

We just got some new Dell computers and I noticed that they are even shorter and wider than the last set. Cynical me thinks it's just a way for monitor makers to make more monitors of a certain nominal size from the same overall size of LCD material. It's simple math -- if you keep the same diagonal but lower the height of a rectangle you get rectangles with less area. In other words, with shorter and wider monitors you can keep the same diagonal length but reduce your area. Damn marketing people!

Answer 8

I like the wider format of the Big LCD's. Actually I got hooked on them before I went into semi-retirement. I was having a lot of eye strain with the 17" CRT. My optometrist suggested an LCD at eye-level. When I got the 17" LCD, and was able to raise it up with a couple of books, I was able to set up so that the sight-line was almost straight on. That change almost eliminated the eye-strain. As to coding, I kinda sorta work in th a side by side setup now-a-days. half the real-estate is for the code ide and the other half is for help and design documentation. I run my taskbar down the right side of the screen. Got more room side to side than across the bottom. Don't know what I'd do with dual monitors, but both of my current LCD's are landscape only, unless I can find a mounting system for them. No need right now.

-BezantSoft

Answer 9

With 16:9 monitors, PIVOT function (rotating up to 90 degrees) is a MUST for use anything of that additional "widht" pixels.

But, best thing of current trend in monitor segment is PRICE which is falling fast enough that two monitors in vertical positions make things just perfect :)

Answer 10

If your methods are generally short (as they should be), and if you have good tools for navigating through your code (e.g. ReSharper), vertical scrolling is largely a non-issue.

I've adapted to the widescreen format, and find that I prefer it for development. We have a mixture in our office (all dual-screen, of course), and I find it frustrating when I have to work at a machine with the narrow monitors, even though they have more vertical space.

I can have Visual Studio's tool palette docked on the left, Solution Explorer on the right (and make Solution Explorer wide enough to see nested folders and long filenames), and still have plenty of room for code. Even with find results and ReSharper's test runner docked to the bottom, I don't find it confining, though I do occasionally resize the bottom dock.