Most typed documents are vertical. Most screens are horizontal. Put the two together and you get a whole load of wasted vertical space on either side of the document.
Putting horizontal toolbars on the horizontal screen makes the space for viewing the document even more horizontal. And this is a bad thing. Heck, people spend extra money to buy screens that can rotate so that they can work on vertical documents on a vertical screen, hence not wasting any space. But not everyone has those.
It would be better just to align the toolbars vertically. This way, you make the viewing space for the document just that little bit more vertical, and use up a bit of that wasted space on the side:
My monitor can rotate. But you need software to get the screen content to rotate with it, and I can’t be bothered to use it because it loads an annoying splash screen on boot up.
You take your ergonomics very seriously, don’t you?
By: Andrew on April 27, 2008
at 11:11 pm
Errr… OK… Strange. I hate changing the layout of my computer cos I always take a while to get used to it.
By: 077 on April 28, 2008
at 5:15 pm
*sigh*, if only everything was multitouch like the iphone, ipod touch and… new macbooks.
By: Gerald on April 28, 2008
at 7:57 pm
The Intel way: Switch ScreenRes to 800×600. Ctrl-Alt-Left. Voila.
I agree with Gerald. If only it were touchscreen…
By: Moby on August 16, 2008
at 12:49 am