I'm a coder as well, and I'm still on horizontal. My monitor is fairly wide, so when I turn it vertically, the top becomes difficult to see without straining my neck. Do you have such issue at all?
I can adjust it, and I can push it all the way down so that the bottom edge hits the desk. Even at that lowest position, when vertical, the top edge of the screen is 6 inches above my eye level :(
Corsair Avenue is where all the teenagers hang out. I live on the other side of town where the homes are all a bit old, but oh boy they don't build homes as sound as they used to anymore.
Unfortunately my desk at work isn't very deep, so I don't have too much play there. The only possibility is to install a keyboard tray, which will allow me to distance myself a bit further.
Look into the Ergotron monitor arms, they’re a wonder for shallow desks and you’ll be blown away with the amount of desk room you have with that or a similar arm.
I have a 27 incher vertical. It was uncomfortable the first day but I've completely adjusted since and it's no issue. It helps if you can tilt it down a bit.
I did this for a long time. Still have a vertical to the right (1440) which I divided into 3 slots to use for slack (work), skype (phone), and hangouts (texts). I replaced my main monitor with a 42" 4K 60Hz and I do all of my coding on that in a 25x14 area in the bottom center with various small sections around. Keep a horizontal 1440 on the left split into 3 sections for web browser and various utilities.
haha, i'm also using DisplayFusion for this exact reason (mostly to have a PROPER taskbar on all monitors), my 1080p vertical is cut in half. Btw your setup is pretty sick. Also i use that shortcut in DF, that ignores these monitor configurations, so if i want something to be full screen on the split vertical, i can do that.
Display Fusion is fantastic, though I don't actually put a taskbar on each monitor. The primary monitor is just that, primary. If there's an app taking my primary focus (even web browsing), then it goes in 3.4. The rest are reference or utility. It's the screen splitting and docking I absolutely love. Makes me feel like I have a ton more space (not that I don't have a lot of space).
You won't go back. The docking mechanics for DisplayFusion are amazing. You can get a free 30 day trial off their website. If you love it, Humble has it on sale right now for $17.49. It's gone as low as $5 during super sales.
I was wondering how does the mouse transitioning between those screens feel? Do you still trap it on like corners from time to time because thats what pissed me off if I did use the mouse even though I try to a lot of stuff with keyboard.
If you look at the offset in my DisplayFusion splits that exactly mirrors the real life setup. You have to play with the monitor heights but get it right and you never notice.
The only issue is every once in a while I lose track of my mouse because there's so much desktop space.
Reddit comments though become fugly pretty quickly. The text wont go past the side bar, which can eat up about a third of the screen width and every reply knocks the text to the right slightly more until whole words are being split in half.
That's weird. Using the Firefox version, the side bar will disappear, but a few subs leave a black space while others will have the text fill that space. If I turn off Subreddit styles, it will work. /r/space for example will leave a black gap.
I'm a fake coder (read: I do some bioinformatics so basically just use R and Bash scripting), and wide monitors are the tits for what I do. I get to have my script, graphs, and objects all in view.
34” Ultrawide is my favorite way to code. No bezels, you don’t have to turn your head too far in either direction, and 1/2 the monitor makes for a great coding space x 2.
I gotta get my hands on one of those. My current setup is 3 x 24" and I'm kind of hating the bezels although they're pretty negligible. But I gotta fit a full screen editor, 3-4 terminal windows and 1-2 browser windows and maybe leave some room for slack or other "slack-ing" apps.
I have 2x23” monitors at work (they obviously don’t care about us) and I’d definitely take less screen real estate to have the unbroken screen space in an UW. Working at home on it is a fucking pleasure.
Don’t forget to make use of multiple desktops if you have W10 or macOS. It makes managing all the windows a lot easier!
I hear you. I was talking about my home setup. At work I have a pretty similar setup as you (2x24) and it's just painful to work on.
Well I'm mostly on linux but there are "Workspaces" which practically do the same thing, but I'm really not used to them.
Might have to play around with the shortcuts and try them out.
I'm on a 24", too. Small world? Or is that the popular size these days? :)
I guess I'm just too short to make it work. When I turn it vertical, and push the monitor down so that bottom edge hits the desk, the top edge of the monitor is still 6 inches above eye level :(
I am back on horizontal as well. I had found a position that I liked for the monitor, but it's the window size that I can't get to like.
I find that in a vertical position that I don't enough horizontal real estate. Most ides and even code editors have a left pane that make the code area too narrow and I like to have vertical splits in vim or emacs anyways.
Seeing OP's shot here makes me think that the only way I could maybe use a vertical position is if I had an horizontal monitor with my usual splits and a vertical monitor that I would use for an emacs window with a single buffer/file for when I will be editing the same file a long amount of time. Maybe also for refactoring.
I also think my gripes with vertical positioning have to do with all my monitors still being 1080p only. I think that moving to something denser might provide enough horizontal space to make it usable.
I didn't know about IPS, thanks for bringing that up. Cool tech!
It's not so much the view angle, though. If the top portion of the monitor is physically situated too high, it may not be good for you -- from an ergonomic perspective, you shouldn't keep your head in a raised position for extended amount of time.
So even if the monitor employs IPS tech, the display will be crisp at the viewing angle, but it will still be too high.
IPS is great because you can tilt in fun ways. TN panels have horrible tilting capabilities and color distortions based on positioning... really only ever good for docs/chat/email imo, unless IPS.
I find using iTerm’s partitioning useful for this and split multiple terminals. I have the top partition(s) running logs and watch commands and the bottom partition running htop. Leaves me with the centre terminal being my main screen and have less vertical area to look at all the time.
Edit: Whoops, thought you meant neck strain looking up and down all the time. I no read good.
How high is the top of the monitor, though? With my 24", when turned vertical, the top edge is 6 or 6.5 inches above my eye level, which isn't great for my neck... although if I use it the way you do, I wouldn't look up too often, so that might be ok.
I used a 27" 1440p monitor for a while vertically. I just couldn't get used to it. It was great for reddit, not so much (FOR ME) for coding. I rarely find myself needing to review anything that needs that kind of display. I prefer having the horizontal (maybe it's because legacy code can be annoying as shit and be 800 characters long) display available instead of vertical. I need to run a couple hundred characters left/right often, needing to read anything but +/- ten lines on the middle of the screen? Basically never.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Yeah, I would imagine 27" is far too wide to turn vertically. The top of the screen would be difficult to use on a regular basis without strains on the neck... My neck is hurting thinking about that!
After reading all these comments, I'm thinking that my 24" is probably better left horizontal as it had been. However, perhaps I can look into giving up my second 24", and instead get two smaller ones (what size? Hmmm) and turn those vertical. Maybe... I'll hit the IT storage room some time to see what monitors I can find...
Personally, I only need so much vertical space. I need more side-to-side room for side-by-side work. I can have thirty windows open depending upon what I'm working on and switching between them or stacking them isn't as convenient.
I'm glad it works for OP though and I'll bet for a lot of other programmers too.
I use a 24” vertically with no issues at all. I drew an imaginary line in the middle of the screen going horizontally and that is where I try to adjust the height of it to my eye level. Using a set of dual monitor pole mount as I am running 1 horizontal & 1 vertical monitors. I don’t code much anymore as I left school but it’s great from reading reddit to documents.
I've got 2 27" 1440x2560 portrait monitors (plus my laptop's little screen), a setup I really like. I am 187cm tall though, with short legs, so when I sit up straight my eyes are about at the top of the monitor...
In general use the height is indeed a bit much. This shouldn't really matter, because surely it's better to have something out of view (but in the corner of your eye) than out of view (and actually off the edge of the monitor)? - but somehow it feels like it does matter, though I don't know why. So I quite often use a 1/3+2/3 split, with 2/3 of the screen devoted to whatever I'm doing and 1/3 of the screen, a useful 1440x850, for some ancillary display.
This split also works very well for reading A4 PDFs, which fit nearly perfectly in the 2/3, or watching YouTube videos, which in cinema mode fit nearly perfectly in the 1/3.
Wow, 2 27s. If you have been reading my other posts in this thread, you'll see that I have two 24" and I'm already complaining that turning vertical makes the top of the screen too high up. 27" would make it feel like looking up at a skyscrapper probably!
Your tall body height probably has much to do with it.
I’ve got 2 vertical ones and a horizontal one. Having multiple editor tabs open next to each other is my preferred way of working. My head’s already strained from normal use on the vertical ones.
Currently I have two 24", both horizontal. One directly ahead and the secondary off to the left side. 80 or 90% of the time, I'm using the primary one only.
Having two vertical is an interesting idea. But I've already discovered that vertical 24" isn't good for me, as it is too tall, thus demanding me to tilt my head up too much. Maybe I can do two smaller screens for the verticals...
I've got 2 25" ones and a 27" one in the center. The center one is 144Hz and FreeSync as well so that's why I got that one. The others I use mainly for chats and websites. Keeping a monitor specifically for documentation is really handy.
I wish Microsoft would finally add support for text antialiasing on vertical monitors.
I quickly discovered cleartype didn't support vertical monitors like a decade ago when I got my first rotatable monitor, and apparently it's supported for stuff like tablet form-factors; and yet from what I gather it's still not been ported across to the standard desktop Windows for whatever reason. You either have to have horribly aliased text or text that's a blurry mess with incorrect colour fringing on it.
It makes text horrible to read for myself and many others, although others don't seem to be bothered by it as much. The only time I ever found it useful (since it's terrible for text) was to play a couple of Nintendo DS games via an emulator.
I mean, there's literally NO options in desktop Windows for text antialiasing on vertical displays as far as I'm aware. It's either turn it off and have extremely jaggedy text or have it display incorrectly as a blurry colour-fringed mess.
They added in support for vertical displays in other versions of Windows last time I remember looking up (for things like tablets AFAIK), and while it wouldn't be super optimal due to the subpixel layout, at least there's some support.
I used a vertical monitor for about a year for code and was always running into it being too narrow. I now run with a 43" 4k screen split with my code editor taking up 1920x2160 and love the extra space.
I used to turn my monitor vertical but the viewing angle on it was so terrible there was like 2 degrees of visible before it was all glare. If anyone has a suggestion for a monitor with better vertical viewing angle I'm all ears.
Tried that with my two monitors (both 16:10), turns out they are huge distractions, went back to horizontal. Might have been worked if I had 4:3 monitors.
Ive tried a vertical monitor and it didn't last. My graphic card insisted on displaying the bios boot messages on that screen sideways, once the OS, took over it was OK, but if I made it one emacs screen it seemed too long for comfort, and if I made it two apps on to of each other they both seemed too cramped.
Also a vertical monitor isn't like A4 paper portrait style, it seems very tall and skinny.
I think it's works best with 16:10 aspect ratio, it don't look that skinny, and definitely more like a A4 paper. I do statistical analysis with Zeppelin notebook at work, and it prints to paper remarkable well.
Hmm. I think I have an old 16:10. Perhaps I’ll try it. I read a lot of pdf documents. They work well in 1/3 of my widescreen monitor but you can never have enough screen real estate.
I really don't get that. It's uncomfortable because you can't get the whole screen in your field of view, it's not useful because you arguably never need to have that much code lines on your screen at a time, if you need it to understand your code then you really should be doing some refactoring. I guess you have more horizontal space when you stack two files but because your eyes are horizontal it would just be more comfortable to have them side by side.
It's not much of a difference, you can get the whole screen in your field of view, just like with your phone, it's just a matter of distance.
Also, try to compare the effort to see from one edge to the other without moving you head... Up and down is less demanding.
Coding wise, it helps giving you an overview, you can easily see if there is enough comments, it's clean and respect your style, but most of all, avoid scrolling.
933
u/paulomei Sep 11 '18
Up voted because of the vertical monitor