Suggestion: Improving Opera for large screens
Tuesday, 6. December 2005, 23:47:02
I was at the local Apple Store the other day, and one thing I like to do there is to browse websites using the very large (wide) Apple Cinema Displays.
'Surely, having such a large monitor will greatly improve the browsing experience,' I thought. As it turns out, it didn't really do much for me. I suppose some people would be glad not to have to use horizontal scrolling, but since I use Opera's fit to window width option, I don't have to worry about horizontal scrolling anyway (I also have 19 inch LCD, which is pretty decent for web browsing).
When you view webpages on a huge display, what happens is that you get the body of the webpage in the center of the page, and a bunch of empty space on the left and right. What a waste! While at the store, I looked around for webpages that were optimized for really wide displays, but I couldn't find any offhand.
(simulation of a webpage viewed on a large display)
Opera does a great job making the browser look good on small screens so that horizontal scrolling is not necessary, but what about Opera on really large screens? Yes, it's possible to change the zoom on a page, or to have multiple windows open to use up the space, but what if you just want one webpage open, and you don't want to zoom? How could we more efficiently use the space?
My suggestion is the following:
Break the page up into 2 or more parts and display those parts simultaneously on screen so as to eliminate the need for vertical scrolling. It's sort of like the ability to view multiple pages at once in word processing software.
(simulation of a webpage viewed on a large display, using the suggested feature; notice the lack of a scrollbar)
Any thoughts?
'Surely, having such a large monitor will greatly improve the browsing experience,' I thought. As it turns out, it didn't really do much for me. I suppose some people would be glad not to have to use horizontal scrolling, but since I use Opera's fit to window width option, I don't have to worry about horizontal scrolling anyway (I also have 19 inch LCD, which is pretty decent for web browsing).
When you view webpages on a huge display, what happens is that you get the body of the webpage in the center of the page, and a bunch of empty space on the left and right. What a waste! While at the store, I looked around for webpages that were optimized for really wide displays, but I couldn't find any offhand.
Opera does a great job making the browser look good on small screens so that horizontal scrolling is not necessary, but what about Opera on really large screens? Yes, it's possible to change the zoom on a page, or to have multiple windows open to use up the space, but what if you just want one webpage open, and you don't want to zoom? How could we more efficiently use the space?
My suggestion is the following:
Break the page up into 2 or more parts and display those parts simultaneously on screen so as to eliminate the need for vertical scrolling. It's sort of like the ability to view multiple pages at once in word processing software.
Any thoughts?
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(30%)
By Lawmune, # 7. December 2005, 13:02:34
That'd be cakey with a CSS float, though I'm not sure where the break would occur, as most pages aren't logically divided into sections that it would make sense to put sideways...
In the spirit of ever more spastic browsing, I understand those with wide screens keep two browser windows open side-by-side. This is interesting.
By anonymous user, # 24. December 2005, 04:25:04