Developer Tip: Look at your work from a different angle. Literally.

April 27, 2012 by Jared | 5 Comments

Patrick "P-Mo" Moroney made an important, game-changing observation: Code is longer than it is wide.

Stuff's about to get real.

Name.com dev team going vertical with monitor

P-Mo goes vertical.

Necessary toolage:

Xrandr to set the size and orientation of the screen

Swivel desk mount

Optional for Awesomeness:

Gentoo Linux on Macbook

X Windowing System

X Monad Window Manager

Don't let the dainty plate and tea cup fool you. This is extreme.

oborseth

"Code is longer than it is wide."

That's what she...never mind.
http://www.facebook.com/PhilFAQS Dave Starr

I wonder why we went sideways? For years my primary computer
monitor was an ancient LCD device from ViewSonics that swiveled to present pages in the portrait rather
than landscape mode ... just like word processors all did back in the
freestanding dedicated word processor days. That monitor is long-gone now and I
miss it like an old friend.

Whether writing a letter to grandma, coding the next big
thing, or working on an ordinary web page, can you name any of them which are
typically wider than they are tall?

Yet for some reason we all got shifted to landscape when it
is the absolute _wrong_ format for about 90%+ percent of the work we
do.

You know that even users of advanced tablets like Samsung and
iPADs never seem to think to turn them vertically so they can see a whole web
page or email in one screen view?

Could you imagine a 'dirt-based' business deciding to send out
all their paper business letters printed in landscape format?

We took 400 plus years of publishing knowledge and threw it
out the window (or Windows) when someone put a computer monitor in front of us.
Why? Do CRTs, LCDs and LED's all cause stupidity?
- jaredatname
  
  That's a great point, especially the writing. It's strange how we don't question these things.
- The Dave
  
  i believe it was so that you could fit larger text on a small-format (think 13" crt) screen, especially for people with bad eyesight, or that didn't want to squint while word processing.
  - http://www.facebook.com/PhilFAQS Dave Starr
    
    A good point, "The Dave", but remember, before there was a personal computer industry at all, businesses and government were spending a fortune on dedicated word processor machines, (Wang and others) and they all had monochromatic, normally white on black screens, like paper, and typically they weren't bigger than 13 inch ... often smaller. Sometimes the 8 inch floppies that served as storage were as wide as the screen
    
    A couple months ago a non-computer oriented relative got a Galaxy Tab and showed it off to me. I immediately surfed to one of my own sites and turned it portrait-wise to see "How I looked".
    
    It didn't shift, so I asked him, "What, you mean it doesn't change automatically like a iPad'?
    
    He responded, "Oh I turned that feature off, why would anyone use it"?
    
    He enabled the format shifting and then he was pleasantly surprised when he looked at my site and others. "Wow", was the response, " You mean you can see all that without scrolling? Why doesn't everyone use this format"?
    
    Why, indeed.

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