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?

  • Eat_Your_Paisley@lemm.ee
    39·
    3 days ago

    3:2 and 4:3 used to be fairly common but I think economies of scale made everything 16:9 because of TVs

    Fortunately 16:10 is becoming more popular again which does give a bit more vertical space

    • Quicky@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      3 days ago

      Yeah. Strange that in general the applications themselves haven’t transitioned with the hardware. Every office desktop seems to have a widescreen, but every office application still has its menus along the top by default, and does little to take advantage of the increased horizontal space.

      • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works
        13·
        3 days ago

        At work I usually need to have multiple windows up, so no one window spans the width of the display. It’s often nice to have two documents side-by-side instead.

      • Eat_Your_Paisley@lemm.ee
        7·
        3 days ago

        If you have VESA mounts at your desk just use one in portrait and one in landscape, at least that’s what I do

      • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        It’s also about the lease common denominator a 16:9 screen will show the aspect ratio of a 4:3 but a 4:3 won’t show a 16:9. The whole point of a 16:9 was to fit all common ratios without distortion.

        • Quicky@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          3 days ago

          Won’t they both show 16:9 or 4:3 but with black bars either vertically or horizontally?

          • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            Yeah but to show a 16:9 on a 4:3 it would be so small you would have more than half your screen taken up by black bars. It’s the whole reason 16:9 was created to also help with the flat and scope film formats. To finally get rid of the awful practice of pan and scan.

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        LibreOffice has a way to switch to a sidebar UI. I always preferred that, because of what you describe…

    • Quicky@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      3 days ago

      Forgot to say, I reckon your economies of scale answer is the reason why. TVs were, so makes sense for monitors to be.