Almost all business applications have horizontal menus and ribbons that take up a decent percentage of a landscape monitor instead of utilising the “spare” screen space on the left or right, and a taskbar usually sits at the bottom or top of the screen eating up even more space (yes I know this can be changed but it’s not the default).
Documents are traditionally printed/read in portrait which is reflected on digital documents.
Programmers often rotate their screens to be portrait in order to see more of the code.
Most web pages rarely seem to make use of horizontal real estate, and scrolling is almost universally vertical. Even phones are utilised in portrait for the vast majority of time, and many web pages are designed for mobile first.
Beyond media consumption and production, it feels like the most commonly used workplace productivity apps are less useful in landscape mode. So why aren’t more office-based computer screens giant squares instead of horizontal rectangles?
It sounds like people in your workspace haven’t discovered opening multiple windows side by side.
I’ve found people in the windows world often make everything full screen all the time- such a waste. You have a 40” 6k display and you open a single giant word doc.
You could have 3 or more documents open side by side- or a webpage for reference, a notepad, and your work or 1000 other combinations.
I do development work so my workflow is extremely text heavy, but it’s rare that I don’t have 4+ windows open simultaneously per display. I also use an old dell monitor I had laying around rotated 90 degrees as others mentioned for log monitoring or chat threads.
I think people just need to get more creative using their space- it’s not the monitor’s fault if you don’t fill it with stuff.
I get so triggered by people just using the external screen as a mirror. With wrong aspect ratio and resolution. With maximized windows.
There’s a reason I need tiling shortcuts and an ultrawide screen.
Can’t imagine there are too many traditional offices with 40" 6k screens.
As I say, I think it’s unfair to blame users for “not using the screen properly” when most office software is set up for portrait, while the screens are horizontal. Yes you can use multiple windows (assuming your widescreen display is big enough to allow productive working with two smaller windows), or multiple screens, or rotate them etc, but they feel like workarounds to get around the fact that the applications work naturally in portrait, and most laptop screens for example don’t easily accommodate any of those options. Which is probably why you see more 3:2 laptop displays than standalone monitors.
You took me a little bit too literally- I was illustrating a point. People have comparably giant displays compared to the 90’s and yet still treat them as single small displays.
It’s absolutely fair to blame the users in this situation. Hit the fucking win + left/right arrow and you can have 2 windows per screen without any additional tweaks. You can also drag them by hand until they hit the border if that’s to your liking.
As mentioned, this doesn’t solve the problem of apps not utilising the available space efficiently. “Just open another app” isn’t a solution to “Why doesn’t the app I’m working on appropriately use the available space”.
Because the app you’re working on is using all of the space it requires. It has no need to expand into the unused space.
Web pages and office documents are tall items that already take up as much of the screen as they reasonably can. Perhaps you could move the tool bars to the sides (and many applications do have these options), but users tend to find that cumbersome and that still doesn’t even come close to utilizing that space. Instead they are kept in a format that allows you to comfortably put two documents (or other windows) side by side because that’s FAR FAR more useful than pointlessly expanding the UI.
Except they don’t use the space well do they, as you’ve said. Toolbars, menus, status bars, task bars etc all reside horizontally.
Most widescreen monitors in offices allow you to put two documents next to each other, but still don’t let you see the whole page and remain readable. There’s no question that a taller monitor wouldn’t solve that, because as you’ve said earlier, why not rotate your screen?
I wouldn’t have to if it was taller 😂
Of you press up/down right after left/right the window will be a quarter of the screen instead of half.
On Windows 11, you can also just drag towards the top, and it’ll give you different snapping options.