Hell no. Typograhy class Lesson 1, never put more than a certain number of words per column (in any case never the whole screen width, on desktops)...

And yet, for some reason, most people want their tabs and toolbars on the top, and the taskbar on the bottom, taking away vertical space that is actually used, and leave swathes of space on the left and right completely unused. I will never understand the resistance against putting things on the side.

> I will never understand the resistance against putting things on the side.

It is a side effect of mobile devices -- Mobile-first design. When apps got popular, people decided that everything needed to be designed for mobile devices first, and adjusted for larger browsers screens later. So people started making everything tall and narrow. And said it was bad practice to do otherwise. Now people who learned UI design after those days often follow that idea. Personally, I am not a fan, but that is where it comes from.

That explains the layout of websites and web apps, but not the desktop taskbar and the desktop browser’s tab bar.

Probably because English is written left to right and doesn't work so well top to bottom. So vertical bits tend to not include text, which is quite limiting. I do remember older UIs that included text at 90 degrees on sidebars, but that seems to have gone completely out of fashion.

The real problem is our screens are the wrong shape. 16:9 is a stupid aspect ratio for a computer monitor if you work mostly with text. Square is probably the best. Using floating windows (like classic Mac OSX) is an option, but for some reason people like full screen windows these days. A tiling window manager is another option to effectively divide the screen up into better shaped areas. I tend to have 6 columns across 2 screens which works well.

> 16:9 is a stupid aspect ratio for a computer monitor if you work mostly with text.

Why? I also usually use it with three columns of text, and it works well at that aspect ratio.

Right, so you essentially use mini 16:27 screens which is a better aspect ratio than 16:9.

What you really have to ask yourself is why 16:9 is a better choice than anything else. It wasn't picked because 3 16:27 columns is ideal for text. The main reason we have them is because it's easier for the screen manufacturers to have just one aspect ratio to deal with. With 16:9 we're forced to have three columns per screen, but what if I only need two? What if I want more lines of text per screen? Square seems like a much more obvious middle ground.

That makes sense, thanks. I've seen people give similar praise to 4:3 and 3:2 laptops.

>The main reason we have them is because it's easier for the screen manufacturers to have just one aspect ratio to deal with.

Not just that, but it was an average of aspect ratios considered for the aesthetic of video data. Not text presentation.

> Probably because English is written left to right and doesn't work so well top to bottom.

My browser tabs are on the left side of the screen and they are all written left to right. There is ample space on the sides of websites to fit this and show the entire tab title. Meanwhile, other people have tabs along the top of the screen that all show one or two letters followed by “...”.

My taskbar is on the right and consists entirely of icons. The only text on it is the date/time and that is also written normally and not rotated.

This is the setup that I was saying I don't understand the resistance against — not 90° rotated text. When people say “vertical tabs”, they are not talking about rotating the text.