Swish and lovely though my new laptop may be, there's one downside that I wasn't expecting. It's not the battery power, because I haven't needed to unplug the power cable yet. It's not the finger-knackering touch-screen mouse, because I can plug in a deskbound replacement. It's not all the useless ad-riddled software preloaded on my hard drive by over-zealous marketeers, because I can uninstall that. And it's not having to re-enter scores of different login names and passwords which my previous computer magically remembered for me, because I had them all written down on the back of an envelope. No, the problem is my lovely sharp widescreen laptop display. Because widescreen sucks.
Which is odd, because widescreen is generally great. Film makers have been working in widescreen for years, allowing full-on action and cinematographic breadth. Transferring those widescreen movies to old-style TV sets proved problematic initially, with serious arty films broadcast squashed between thick black rectangles in the dreaded letterbox format. But television screens eventually responded by becoming broader, allowing a more detailed visual experience without the need for dark sandwiching. And TV producers now design programmes and on-screen graphics to make the most of the widescreen format, making even your daily soap opera more of a home cinema experience. But that's only for film and TV. Because online widescreen still sucks.
There are two different kinds of webpage - fixed width and variable width. Annoyingly, as is suddenly becoming all too apparent on my laptop's new wide screen, the great majority of webpages are fixed width. The webmasters of fixed width pages decide what screen size they'll support (usually a minimum value) and then imprison their content to match, which usually means a weeny-thin column of text plus a sidebar (or two), and maybe an extra column of adverts if they're so inclined. And then to each side, for those of us viewing on wide (or even wide-ish) screens, we're presented with acres of useless blankness. It's such a waste. My screen goes across, but most webpages only go down. I have all this spare space on my screen, but webpage designers aren't using it. I could be reading so much more of your page in one go, but no, it's all hidden off the bottom of my display. Damn you all. Because I'm having to scroll up and down far more than I ever had to before on my old monitor with its deeper screen, and if I end up with premature RSI I may just sue.
Alas only a minority of webpages are of variable width, and therefore widescreen friendly. My blog, for example, moulds to fit the width of screen available. If your screen's titchy, the column width shrinks. If your screen's wide, the text expands to fill the space. Admittedly this may result in line widths exceeding optimum readable dimensions, but you can always shrink your browser window if you like. You have a choice. Whereas if I'm looking at other people's fixed width pages, I have no choice but to view them inefficiently. I'm not seeing half as much of your webpage as I used to, especially if you're wasting your top three inches with a big title and menu bar, and it's a real letdown. Because I never realised before quite how important depth of screen is when surfing the internet. Somewhow widescreen is no substitute.
