Our 5pm project management service, while designed to fit into most popular screen sizes, still takes full advantage of bigger screens and higher resolutions. It also works great with the new and popular widescreen format. There are a couple of things that make it possible:
1. Dual-panel layout takes the maximum advantage of the horizontal space, especially in combination with (2)…
2. Customizable interface – you can resize the panels and even show/hide/resize columns inside those panels, creating your own layouts. Here is an example of two different 5pm layouts:
Check more on interface customization in our short video tutorial “Customizing the Interface”.
3. Timeline view is a natural fit for widescreens due to its horizontal layout.
Almost 40% of our 5pm users have widescreens.
Do you have a widescreen monitor? If not, there is a big chance that you own a widescreen TV. Nearly 30% of all LCDs are widescreens.
Websites are traditionally developed with a vertical layout in mind. The majority use fixed width designs, that fit into smaller resolution screens – the most common ones (800×600 used to be the standard, now it’s 1024×768). The rest of us, with newer and bigger screens, are a minority. Our higher-then-average resolution usually comes with empty space around web pages. While you are reading this blog, you are most likely enjoying the nice blank space on both sides of this article. Join the club.
With widescreens things became even worse. Once again, those who have bigger screens and higher resolution, and now, a widescreen format, don’t gain much from this extra horizontal space. Because of that, it became a common practice to open the browser in a smaller window on the side, and use the rest of the screen space for other applications.
Sure, there are websites with “liquid” layout (full screen width), but those come with the long-text-lines problem, and, once again, widescreens are the ones that suffer the most.
With widescreens gaining more popularity, the UI layouts will adjust too, especially for web applications, favoring customizable horizontal designs. It will be interesting to watch this trend evolving.
Meanwhile, check 5pm demo – widescreens are welcome.