Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's only a problem if you can't move the taskbar to the left/right and hide the browser titlebar.


No, it is a problem that you have to.

It is a design failure that the interface is not build to accomodate the typical screen that the interface is sold with.

This is like selling right handed scissors at a convention for left handed people or color coding a guide for colorblind people


I think you are exaggerating here, and I don't see the design failure as long as you have a choice how to configure your environment.

To take your comparison, color blind people can enable accessibility options, but it's not enabled by default for everybody.

The only OS that actively disallows this is macOS... I couldn't figure out how to move menu bar on that test machine...

Just for my understanding, what would your ideal interface be?


His point is that if 90% of the users were color blind, the accessibility options would be enabled by default. So, in accordance, if 99% of people use a wide screen, task bars and window decorations should be to the side, not top or bottom, by default.


It goes well beyond that. I can't make the bookmarks or tabs on the browser go down the side even though that would save a bunch of space vertically. Windows/Ubuntu/Mac OS all use the titlebar at the top of the window and waste vertical space even though horizontal is more in abundance and has been for at least 15 years. When you step back and look at the interface its all vertical aligned, everything is top to bottom and yet vertical space is the most precious and least wasteable, why waste 50 pixels on a titlebar and tab bar? The fact fullscreen exists for some apps says it all about the OS waste of that space.

There are a few programs that do this well. NLEs for video usually use horizontal space for the timeline and they get much better horizontal use than just about anything else I use. Photo editing software often puts toolbars on the side but even though inkscape does do this it still has a toolbar even with the tools and properties either side. But websites are mostly vertical and waste most of the space a lot of the time as are browsers. The OS wastes a bunch of vertical space where horizontal is available and the taskbar/app bar is about half of the problem.


You can search a bit and find that you can hide/move title, menu and tab bars.

menu bar:

- Ubuntu - use KDE or other WM - you have menu bar on the right if you want (or removed entirely)

- Windows - right click and configure as you wish.

- Mac OS - complain to Apple... I couldn't figure it out either... probably was holding it wrong as per Steve Jobs...

title bar:

- firefox / chrome have option to hide it entirely.

tab bar:

- firefox: first search, there are others: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...

As for other programs... it's up to them.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: