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0 pointsTulliusCicero5y ago0 comments

> Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-restricted, but not the header [0]?

For extremely wide screens it obviously looks awkward, but the idea seems sound in principle.

IIRC, the reason you'd want to restrict width of content is that it's hard for your eyes to track back all the way left, to the start of the content, when you need to go down a line. But the header is just a single line, so it doesn't have this problem.

In the case of very wide screens they should probably restrict the header width too, just not quite as much.

0 comments

ehsankia5y ago

But often these sites start doing the right thing and then restrict it, tkaing a step backward.

Before: https://i.imgur.com/sgODcLW.png

After: https://i.imgur.com/8j7P1YE.png

The latter is objectively worse. I understand that > 1080p monitors are a small fraction of your user base, but that's still not reason to not test your UI on larger resolutions, for a site as big (and prominently used by devs with large screens) as GitHub.

My eye still has to jump back and forth long distances if I want to fork the repo for example.

TulliusCiceroOP5y ago

Agreed, the UI in the after picture is awful. I really doubt it's intentional there, unfortunate that there's an oversight like that.

rsynnott5y ago

Do that many people use maximised windows on 16:9 or greater screens? Maybe it’s just because all my early experience was on 4:3, but I’d never maximise a browser window on a modern screen.

I’d agree this is bad design, but I’d be somewhat surprised if it’s a big practical problem for most people.

TheDong5y ago

There are many many people who keep a single window maximized at all times and alt-tab between windows.

It's the most basic form of window management, and it works pretty well.

It's especially helpful if you want to be able to focus on one thing at a time only, and not have multiple different windows with disparate screen noise visible at once.

I often operate in that mode, using a tiling window manager to have a single maximized window on my primary monitor, and optionally a tile of auxiliary windows on my secondary monitor.

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wjdp5y ago

I'm in quite a small niche: tiling window managers. When there's only one window open it takes 100% width and height. Every app I use other than some websites handles this extra space well.

You can reduce it by making real or fake windows on the left and right. Haven't gotten around to making a macro for that yet. If it's an article reader mode also exists.

ashtonkem5y ago

The idea that anyone wouldn’t maximize all applications, especially their browser, is utterly bewildering to me.

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imetatroll5y ago

I use xmonad as a window manager and do have one workspace where my browser lives. I find the new layout to be a pretty steep downgrade.

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