The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Monitor on it's side

Does anyone know of a (PC) monitor that is basically reversed from normal monitors, i.e. the height is greater than the width?

Sometimes I wonder if those would be more useful, since they more closely follow paper orientation. Many websites are also narrow and long like this one. I realize that is to accomodate lower screen resolutions, but such a monitor would be useful for it too.

I think some Macs can rotate their screens.

I would even like to experiment with a software solution and the monitor sitting on it's side.

Walt
Friday, May 14, 2004

I think Intel cards have a rotate screen built keyboard shortcuts built-in

Also check this out

http://personalcomputing.portrait.com/us/products/pp_overview.html

KayJay
Friday, May 14, 2004

What you want is a "portrait" monitor. I know I've seen them sold in the past, but not recently. Not that I've been looking for them. You see these alot in DTP shops; you might want to check a mac catalog or two.

Also, TabletPC's switch from landscape to portrait orientation.

Chris Tavares
Friday, May 14, 2004

Google is your friend.

We use a copule of different types of these for the folks in our scan department (who basically scan and file all the papaerwork we have or get).

http://www.google.com/froogle?q=Rotate+LCD+Monitor

Steve Barbour
Friday, May 14, 2004

The latest crop of LCDs let your rotate and have software to do so.

The biggest thing, I think, is That's Just The Way Things Are Done. It was probably advantageous at the time to be that way so that you could share some or all of your manufacturing pipeline with regular TVs, which also have always been 4:3. Remember Apple IIs, TRS-80 Color Computers, Commie 64s, etc. which all were pretty much designed to plug into your TV.

It's probably a wash. Viewing textual content like articles, web sites, etc. is much easier with narrow lines of 9-11 words each. Viewing code is probably better with enough room for indentation. Video is either 4:3 or 16:9, neither of which works well with a narrow screen.

I'm pretty sure that CRTs work best when they are square. Wide-screen displays wouldn't have necessarily been possible 30 years ago with any sort of quality.

Flamebait Sr.
Friday, May 14, 2004

FWIW, I've tried putting my monitor on its side and using the rotate-screen settings, but my lines of text were far too jumpy - they'd appear to jump up and down (left to right according to the monitor). I couldn't bear to look at it for more than a few minutes, but it made much more efficient use of screen real estate.

I was a little concerned about what the heat dissipation would be like in that physical orientation, but I didn't leave it that way long enough to actually test it.

schmoe
Friday, May 14, 2004

Schmoe, I hope that was an LCD panel, and not a tube monitor. . . Tubes are only supposed to operate properly in one oreientation. . .

Elephant
Friday, May 14, 2004

IMHO this question's about 18 months too late. Monitor resolution and size is now at a point where you can easily view two pages side-by-side.

So that would be 17x11, which suits a landscape layout.

Philo

Philo
Friday, May 14, 2004

Philo,

How many web browsers/IDE's support viewing pages side by side?

Paul

Paul
Friday, May 14, 2004

Bear in mind when you buy a multi-purpose LCD with the intention of always using it in portrait mode, you're killing the value of ClearType. If this is the way you wanted to work all the time, I'd look for a monitor that's dedicated to it, with the pixels still lined up properly for sub-pixel rendering.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Friday, May 14, 2004

Microsoft Word offers a side-by-side reading mode, but I'm not aware of any browsers that do it. Side-by-side of a single code file wouldn't make much sense (your IDE question).

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Friday, May 14, 2004

I do it now. I have a nice big monitor that I can use at 1600x1200, so I can have a pair of 800 width windows at 1200 height. ... mmmm... no scrolling.

And recently I picked up a dual head card, so I have a little 13" monitor to have my mp3 player and other little things on it.

KC
Friday, May 14, 2004

I use a 18" Eizo LCD monitor in Portrait mode - 1280x1024 "reversed" into 1024x1280 - GREAT for programming ! Please note that not all LCD monitors have Portrait mode (ie. can easily be rotated)

I can view approx. 138 lines of code at the screen using Lucida Console 6 point font (yes, very small, but I have good eyes :-)

Nvidia graphic cards have built-in software which allows you to rotate everything 90 degrees; no apparent performance loss - very smooth and nice !

Word documents and web pages are a joy to look at also ! Higly recommended for programmers !

AI
Friday, May 14, 2004

A buddy of mine had a Mac with a monitor that you could swivel between portrait and landscape. The neat thing was that it had a mercury switch built in so it could tell which way it was pointed and have the computer switch directions just by swivelling the monitor.

MilesArcher
Friday, May 14, 2004

"How many web browsers/IDE's support viewing pages side by side?"

IE does - I just open two browser windows and keep them next to each other. I would hope most of the "tabbed" browsers still let you open two instances of the app, though I don't know if you can tile windows within the app.

But that's not the real issue - it's rare I need two browsers open. What I *do* do a lot is have a browser and an application open next to it; whether it's an IDE, Database manager, Word, or Outlook - I do that a LOT. (someone pointed out Word can do side-by-side, which is true, but I can't get into that; however for people who do a lot of document comparison it's pretty useful)

VS.Net lets you tile tabbed groups, and when I'm coding a web app it's invaluable - UI on the left, code on the right.

Philo

Philo
Friday, May 14, 2004

MilesArcher: they were Radius monitors. I used them for desktop publishing back when. I could quickly switch between landscape (overview of a 2-page spread) and portrait (full-size view of a single page). Very useful.

I'm actually rather surprised it hasn't taken off, at least in some niche markets.

I saw some guy selling PCs on TV a little while back that had a rotating display, but only for certain LCD models he had, and you had to change the rotation yourself (!!) with some Windows driver preference. It struct me as a very inelegant design.

Radius guy
Friday, May 14, 2004

---"though I don't know if you can tile windows within the app."

Just open two Netscape windows and then click on the taskbar and chose 'Tile Windows Horizontally' or 'Tile Windows Vertically'. Been a regular Windows feature since 95.

Stephen Jones
Saturday, May 15, 2004