Why doesnt someone invent a monitor resolution between 1280 and 1600?

[Nodrog]

BECAUSE 1280 IS TOO SMALL AND 1600 IS TOO BIG, AND THIS CAUSES ME MUCH ANGER!

[Nixjim]

I'm sure it will happen as soon as you can guarantee them at least 1 million orders for it.

[Nodrog]

its stupid though. You get a nice smoothly increasing size going through 640, 800, 1024, 1152, 1280, and then you get an absolutely massive leap all the way up to 1600. Would it really be that hard to standardise 1440x1080 or something? :/

[Monkeypimp]

I have 800 on a 17" moniter.

anything else is creepy small :/

[xtothez]

Didn't we discuss this the other day and conclude nodrog was 'wrong'?

[xtothez]

Common sense strikes again.

[Nodrog]

Originally posted by xtothez
Common sense strikes again.

What does that have to with anything?

I dont like using 1600x1200 resolution. I could give you a list of reasons why I dislike it and why I dont think Windows handles it particularly well (because the GUI was designed specifically for 'average' users who normally use low/medium resolutions, and hasnt really changed in any major ways since windows 95 when everyone was using 640x400), but its completely irrelevant to this thread.


"I dont like 1600 and I dont understand why theres such a massive gap between this and the next biggest resolution, it makes no sense whatsoever considering there are only small steps between most other resolutions."

[mbushell]

Write a letter to a respectable company, it'll be more use than discussing here

[LHC]

anything below 1024x768 makes me die on my monitor.

1600xwhatever is 60Hz
1024x768 is 85Hz, so that isn't too bad.

But anything below 85Hz gives me 25 migrains a minute.

[Nixjim]

I don't know why. I use 800x600 myself, any smaller I can't see the stuff on the screen. People who use 1600 must keep their nose pressed against the glass while working.

[Nodrog]

Originally posted by Nixjim
I don't know why. I use 800x600 myself, any smaller I can't see the stuff on the screen. People who use 1600 must keep their nose pressed against the glass while working.

Well, you can play about with the fonts and icon sizes until its usable, but you still have to fight against a fixed posiiton rather than pointer-centric interface, menus that dont bleed into the top of the screen, taskbars that dont bleed into the right hand side of the screen, a world-wide-web that wasnt designed for that high resolution, small icons in most applications that break Fitt's law and are made even worse by using a high resolution, having a 'start menu', lack of options in the right mouse button popup menu, no decent way to cycle applications without moving your mouse all the way down to the bottom of the screen (alt-tab doesnt work when you have about 20 windows open, and you shouldnt have to touch the keyboard to cycle windows anyway), lack of full screen in most apps, lack of taskbar grouping etc etc etc etc.

The mouse is probably the worst thing. Youre going to have to move it about a lot, since Windows has most things in a fixed position (eg taskbar, menus, etc), so thats going to be a lot of mouse-movement at high resolutions. To compensate this you can always turn the mouse-speed up (which makes things worse, yet again Fitts law is broken), but since icons are generally so small it makes it harder to land on anything at your first attempt and you normally have to wave the mouse around it till you eventually hit it.

1600x1200 sucks. It might be ok to switch to while youre doing graphics work, but its lunacy to use it as a standard resolution - its a straight swap of trading efficiency for aestetics.

[Snurx]

I want the same as Nodrog.

1440x1080

or something in that "area".

[CjC]

I think resolutions have something to do with CRT scan rates.

You could probably have desired resolutions using TFT flat screen technology but then thats a custom job and also you'd be stuck with that resolution and suffer from TFT problems, like ghosting etc..

[meglamaniac]

You can set custom resolutions with Powerstrip, afaik.
Dunno how well it works though.

[MrMighty]

My housemate uses 1400 on his laptop.

[Coffee]

Originally posted by Nodrog

1600x1200 sucks.

If you have a 14" fishbowl of a monitor and put it in 1600x1200 its obviously going to be crap. If you use 1600x1200 on a decent monitor (21"+) then its (effectivley) the same size as a smaller one, except the screen gives you 3x the area to work with.

I like Windows. Most of the claims you have against Windows makes you sound like a raving clueless linux zealot*. Such as...

"having a 'start menu', lack of options in the right mouse button popup menu, no decent way to cycle applications without moving your mouse all the way down to the bottom of the screen (alt-tab doesnt work when you have about 20 windows open, and you shouldnt have to touch the keyboard to cycle windows anyway), lack of full screen in most apps, lack of taskbar grouping etc etc etc etc. "

I dont like having your start menu on the RMB. The desktop is mainly covered by windows, and i've never missed it going from linux-win.

Alt-tab does me fine, and+shift+tab goes backwards, and if you want a specific app you move the mouse down to the start bar and click it. its really not that hard and I fail to see an easier way of doing it. I've never known alt+tab to magically stop working when there is 20+ windows open too.

I'm not sure what you mean by taskbar grouping - if it means putting the same instance of the application together windows does this.

As for fitts law why do most linux distro's have tiny little thin boxes stacked 2x high at the bottom of the screen? Its the linux ppl that need to read up on interface design, and the most important point ... consistancy.

Take my desktop for example. Auto hide start bar + right hand menu** (also auto hide). To select a running program I move the mouse to the bottom of the screen and click. To run an existing program I move it to the far right and click. to get at other system settings I move to the bottom left and click. A program running in the tray I move to the bottom right + click. At very few points do I have to click the middle of the screen to use the system, just to use the program im running at the time.

* Raving clueless linux zealots: Everything Windows is bad. Everything Linux is good. Generally apart from toying with 95 they havn't got much true experiance with windows, and mainly slag off m$ (and use the lame little m$ abbrev.) to make themselves look cool. They also claim everything you can do on windows you can do better on linux. and through a combination of denial, trying to impress people and a love of making things difficult (such as thinking that end users should have to compile their own programs, that bash is a good idea etc.) they are holding linux back from the mainstream much more than ms ever will

** If anyone wants to know how to do the bar on the right i'll write a short bit. Its piss easy and takes 2 minutes to set up.

[ParraCida]

Powerstrip is the answer.

Powerstrip menu: Display profiles --> Configure Advanced Timing Options --> Custom resolutions.

1400x1050 is an option.

[meglamaniac]

yay, i was right!

[xtothez]

Originally posted by Nodrog
Well, you can play about with the fonts and icon sizes until its usable

Which I did.

Originally posted by Nodrog
a world-wide-web that wasnt designed for that high resolution

What exactly is the trouble there? Surely you mean certain pages not designed for hi-res. I know many websites that are perfectly happy at 640 through to 2048. If this is really a problem then make the window smaller...

Originally posted by Nodrog
small icons in most applications that break Fitt's law and are made even worse by using a high resolution

Surely these icons would only look a little different at 1280 or 1440? And what the hell has Fitt's Law got to do with it? That's used to provide design rules on GUI's intended for a generic audience, it's not suited to any personal taste. If you can cope with small icons, why not use them? If you can't, I suggest something like this.

Originally posted by Nodrog
lack of options in the right mouse button popup menu

This is affected by the resolution how, exactly?

Originally posted by Nodrog
no decent way to cycle applications without moving your mouse all the way down to the bottom of the screen (alt-tab doesnt work when you have about 20 windows open, and you shouldnt have to touch the keyboard to cycle windows anyway)

If you're using so many programs at once, the higher the resolution the better. Personally I keep my task bar on the side so all app names can be read easily and so the buttons for them are bigger. My mouse spends most of the time in the top left anyway, so there's no epic trek to the far corners of the screen.

Originally posted by Nodrog
lack of full screen in most apps, lack of taskbar grouping etc etc etc etc.

'Windows XP' lololololol
(ok, so I dont use that. taskbar grouping is overrated anyway, and only necessary at low resolutions)

Originally posted by Nodrog
To compensate this you can always turn the mouse-speed up (which makes things worse, yet again Fitts law is broken), but since icons are generally so small it makes it harder to land on anything at your first attempt and you normally have to wave the mouse around it till you eventually hit it.

Seriously, I would get an eye test. Even a 16x16 icon doesnt take much effort to hit providing its easily visible (no retarded colour schemes).

Originally posted by Nodrog
1600x1200 sucks. It might be ok to switch to while youre doing graphics work, but its lunacy to use it as a standard resolution - its a straight swap of trading efficiency for aestetics..

Surely efficiency is being to handle more programs silmultaneously, see more information on the screen at once including always-on-top apps, and not worry about excessive scrolling on larger pages and images?

[meglamaniac]

My god man, do you have enough drives?!

[menth0l]

His desktop scares me :C

[xtothez]

Originally posted by meglamaniac
My god man, do you have enough drives?!

Nope :/

Ever since I got adsl I've been permantly short of space : )
Luckily I got some nice Christmas pay and I'm now running:
30gb + 60gb + 2x80gb disks, and have ~60gb free.

Oh, and if you hadn't guessed those are virtual CD-ROMs, I only have 2 optical drives (cdrw and dvd).

[Mushroom]

My monitor's quite old and i don't think it makes it above 1024x768 - and it can do that quite nicely at 75Hz, which isn't bad.
I share your sentiments about 1600 though, i saw a friend's monitor go up to that and you couldn't see a bloody thing, so the point of it defeats me somewhat. Unless of course you're an owl, in which case you may be excused.

[Nodrog]

Originally posted by Coffee
If you have a 14" fishbowl of a monitor and put it in 1600x1200 its obviously going to be crap. If you use 1600x1200 on a decent monitor (21"+) then its (effectivley) the same size as a smaller one, except the screen gives you 3x the area to work with.

I like Windows. Most of the claims you have against Windows makes you sound like a raving clueless linux zealot*. Such as...
.[/i]

I use Windows primarilly on the desktop. I generally like it, however, the GUI is poorly designed in certain areas. It doesnt bother me significantly at medium resolutions, but it irritates me greatly at anything high res. If that makes me an "anti-windows zealot", then whatever. I dont understand why anyone who points out glaringly obvious flaws in Windows is a "linux zealot", thats a rather retarded assumption to make, and it reminds me of the arguments used by many American's in debate threads. KDE and Gnome suffer from almost the exact same set of problems, which is why I dont use 1600x1200 in them either. Maybe you have just have a higher tolerance threshhold than I do.

xtoteth. Again, I dont really notice things like this at medium resolutions because I'm so used to them, but quite a lot of them (and similar flaws) really really really start to annoy me at higher ones. The higher the resolution, the more significant flaws in GUI design become - that is obvious. I've found that you can eliminate quite a few of them by using something like litestep, but its a lot of hassle, and youre fighting against fundamentally 'wrong' GUI design. Like I said, the basics of the Windows GUI havent changed significantly since Windows 95, when everyone was using low res monitors. As everyone is now used to that style of GUI, it becomes too risky to alter it even when people have upgraded their displays significantly. Again, the same problems are also in things like KDE, which appear to be doing their best to copy Windows gui exactly, including the flaws. I mean, are you honestly trying to say that you can use the same fundamental philosophy of GUI design to design an interface thats optimal for both 640x400 and 1600x2000 res?

[Nodrog]

Originally posted by ParraCida
Powerstrip is the answer.

Powerstrip menu: Display profiles --> Configure Advanced Timing Options --> Custom resolutions.

1400x1050 is an option.

Excellent, thanks.