Who told people wide screen was a good idea?

Yes, but I'm assuming that it is over all computers and not just laptops. Considering that all monitors starting from like 20" are 1920x1080, and all monitors these days are mostly over 20", 1920x1080 would be more common than 1600x900 which is found in laptops and smaller monitors.

 

That is correct, all computers. The text of the article can be found at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/29/improvements-in-windows-explorer.aspx

It's about the UI change in Windows Explorer from a toolbar to a ribbon like Office. They explain how they used screen stats to go with a design for widescreen instead of standard screen ratios.

 

IMHO, the ribbon is stupid and takes up far too much room. If they wanted something widescreen friendly and ribbon like, they should've moved the ribbon to the left side of the screen or something. You have to be at 1920 pixels horizontally before Word will let you view 2 pages side by side (at 100%) anyways. Though, I have gotten used to the locations of stuff with the ribbon after having used it for like 4 years.

 

Agreed, the Office ribbon was a boneheaded move, motivated as much by a need to convince people they were offering something really new as anything. The arrogance of making the old menu placements unavailable is mind-boggling-- sort of like removing the ability to turn off ClearType from IE9.

As for me, I use the Windows Classic Theme and have even replaced the start menu with the old-style classic menu. It makes a lot more sense to me than the boneheaded way everything sorts in the new Windows 7 start menu. I also unpin everything and use the Quick Launch Toolbar. This might seem less sexy to some people, but I get more work done; and discarding the Windows 7 look and feel garbage means less pixels are wasted on my laptop screen.

 

I like the ribbon in office... it drives me nuts having to work with the obtuse menus in office 2003. It's impossible to find anything in that maze.

I'll have to see how it works in Win Explorer in Win 8. It looks like they've got some good ideas there but it's hard to tell until I use it. I do think it's a questionable move in windows explorer due to the limited horizontal lines of resolution in 16:9 screens on most laptops.

 

From what I've seen of Windows 8, I think I'll be sticking with 7. 8 looks like a smartphone OS. If I'm using a computer, I want a computer OS, not a smartphone OS. We have the cursor and stuff for a reason.

 

Here's a nice little visual of users:



This is from the Building Windows 8 Blog over on MSDN:

Improvements in Windows Explorer - Building Windows 8 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

I don't really like 16:9 either but I guess as was said earlier, "most users" don't really care as they are snapping up "crappy" LCDs in record numbers!

EDIT - Guess i'm late that's what I get for not reading the whole thread. I only read up to page 6-7.

 

You know what, if the internet starts phasing out the 1024x768 bare minimum resolution, then I'm sure manufacturers will follow. If a lot of the websites made it so that you needed a 1920x1080 monitor to fit everything on screen, then manufacturers would probably be forced to put a 1920x1080 panel in laptops or otherwise no one would buy them.

And I have to say, Windows 8 looks about as appealing as Vista did 5/6 years ago.

 

That's okay a visual helps. That whole graph makes me cry. 19x12 is a dismal showing, although it's a wide screen it's my preferred res. You don't need a $700 video card to play games like 30s. You can fit two full pages comfortably (over 23"+ monitors) side by side. And the best monitors are made at that res. NEC 2490, Dell's H-IPS's etc.

Surprising to see the 5:4 so represented. Who makes that? Ancient 17s, 19's, ancient laptops where win 7 doesn't even run.

The second best res is not even showing, 16x12. So many great monitors came out at that res and are still out like NEC 2090uxi, Dell 2007FP, etc and it was just perfect until 19x12 came.

Finally all the 16:9's...People like cheap.