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It does not effectively utilize the extra horizontal space on large or wide screen monitors.

In lieu of a screenshot, imagine if you will the sight of more than half the width of a 2048x1152 monitor being useless whitespace.

Is this a really difficult problem? I know it's commonplace - there are many sites that squish the text into 1024 or less pixels.

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  • 16
    Better question: Why in the hell are you maximizing anything on a 2048x1152 monitor?
    – Eric
    Commented Sep 13, 2009 at 22:58
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    Also, I'm on 1440x900 and it looks fantastic to me.
    – Eric
    Commented Sep 13, 2009 at 22:58
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    @Eric: because it's easy to position windows that way, and it looks good. I've tried both ways, maximizing and not maximizing, and with most programs I much prefer the maximized view even if it doesn't make good use of the screen real estate. And trying to put two windows side by side is just ridiculous visual overload.
    – David Z
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 0:23
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    When talking about horizontal scaling I rarely think of website design. lol :)
    – Miha Hribar
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 5:58
  • For the question of why: I have good eyesight and can load large amounts of text from other web sites, so I expect that other sites can offer that utility.
    – user135818
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 3:32

2 Answers 2

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Mostly, it's because design sense says that text lines which are too long are actually harder to read than text which is broken up into more lines. Fixed-width layouts are also easier to write because you have an idea of how text will wrap around elements of a given size.

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  • I'd be unhappy if it horizontally scaled and the line-lengths became wrong. It's well-designed as it is(.)
    – arbales
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 4:46
  • I think that you are right or that the design scene is right. But who the hell are these people to tell me what kind of layout I am supposed to be looking at. Only I know what is harder for me to read.
    – innaM
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 10:49
  • If you prefer a different layout, then most modern web browsers let you set up user style sheets for web sites webdesign.about.com/od/userstylesheets/a/aa010906.htm . Or you can pick up Greasemonkey for Firefox and script a new layout. In fact if you're using Firefox you can just click View -> Page Style -> No Style, this strips off the styling and gives you full width text.
    – GAThrawn
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 13:00
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    If arbales means "don't make me scroll horizontally" I completely agree. If Manni means "don't limit the maximum width of text columns" I agree too. If GAThrawn means "don't ask stackoverflow to change, change yourself by downloading some script and figure it out" I disagree.
    – user135818
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 3:38
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This will solve the problem for you if you use Firefox - go to about:config and set browser.zoom.siteSpecific to True.

Then use CTRL + Mousewheel-Up.

Very few sites are going to look great on such large resolutions, until such resolutions become standard.

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  • [Ctrl] + [+] will also work.
    – Brad Gilbert
    Commented Sep 14, 2009 at 18:49
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    I'm trying to fit more information in my visual field, not make stuff bigger. My apologies for not being clearer.
    – user135818
    Commented Sep 15, 2009 at 3:40

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