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 😂

This makes no sense at all. UIs are justified in not making full use of a widescreen monitor because at some point someone might want to use another at the same time?

No I’m not upset by anything 😂

It sounds like you’re excusing poor UI design by saying “just use the extra space for something else”

If only those apps displayed even less content horizontally, we could get even more of them on the screen and be yet more productive, right!? 😂

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”.

I think you might be missing the point though.

Not everyone needs to multitask in two apps simultaneously. In fact most of the time, most workers are only going to be working on a single application. If that application isn’t making full use of the widescreen, then saying “just fill that space with another app” doesn’t solve anything. In fact if anything, it potentially reduces the real estate the main app had.

Yes they now have two apps open, but they’re still only working on one. They don’t “need” the other one, so why not design the primary app or web page to more appropriately scale to the display?

It’s got absolutely fuck all to do with “what can the user do to better utilise the technology” and everything to do with UI design.

This is an unnecessarily patronising response.

Your answer to apps not utilising left and right space efficiently is “well you should do something else then”. It’s not the user’s fault.

Edit: Deleting this comment because I’m an idiot.

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.

I don’t think widescreens exist “primarily for additional tasks in an office setting”. I think they’re the default because, as another user said, TVs were that ratio.

It’s weird that it’s fine for widescreens to have additional areas to the sides that aren’t used by many apps, but adding space vertically that would automatically be used by every office application isn’t fine.

Yes you can use two apps side by side, yes you can rotate your screen, but the software in general literally defaults to reducing that available space by putting the taskbar and menus where they are, while usually being full screen by default.

Saying “You’re using it wrong” is blaming the user for using the computer the way it was presented out of the box.

Genius.

Essentially if you want to use a monitor horizontally that’s fine, if you want to rotate it vertically that’s also fine, if you want to have equal horizontal and vertical real estate you’re out of your mind.

we use the width more than the height.

Tell that to my scrolling finger.

Not if the square monitor is the same width as the widescreen though.

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

Think I had the exact same one in about 2008!

Assuming the software takes that into account too though, yes?

I mean, yes we can rotate screens if the hardware allows for it, but the defaults always seem to be “screen is horizontal, software control is also horizontal”, therefore eating up a percentage of the available working document space, which itself, is generally portrait.

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

I reckon that was more to do with the actual screen size though. Screens are a fuckload bigger and cheaper these days.

Yeah but vertical monitor with extra width is even better 😂

Exactly what I do too, then had a shower thought about why I had to.

What do you mean by look good though? My question is based on productivity, and why software seems geared towards having top-down functionality on screens that generally provide more width.