I use a non-default Windows colour scheme on most of my machines, and have a laptop with a 124 DPI screen, which Windows is set to.
A lot of programs I tested or even use daily seem to have problems with that, showing for example non-standard sizes of controls, cut-off UI elements, unreadable text and so on. There is the whole range from slightly annoying to (nearly) unusable.
Now I feel that a lot of these issues are unnecessary. A simple test run on a high-resolution screen in a few colour schemes would show them, some of them are even very easy to correct (like always using clWindow, clWindowText and clBtnFace instead of clWhite, clBlack and clSilver). Some of them are harder, like proper control sizing.
So my question is: Do you try to follow the recommendations in the UI guidelines regarding system colours, sizing and spacing of UI elements, and font sizes and faces? Is testing for compliance to them part of your QA process? Do you even try to lay out your forms in dialog units instead of pixels, even though most of the IDEs (Delphi in my case) have pixel-oriented designers?
[EDIT]: On re-reading this after sleeping I notice that this question may look like an invitation for fruitless discussion. It is not meant that way, I'd definitely be interested in tools to help me create applications that conform to the UI interface guidelines, an area where I feel Delphi is letting me down a little. See also my own answer.
I definitely don't. It costs time that I prefer spending on improving the experience of many rather than the few who use non-standard windows settings. A few things I usually do, which should still fix some of these issues:
use clWindows etc. because that's the standard for Delphi controls anyway, so why change it?
place labels above entry fields rather than to the left, which should solve many size problems
make sure the forms resize properly, by setting the anchors
make sure the tab order is correct (which can become a major annoyance if not done)
But I certainly don't take the time to set up test computers with odd resolutions and colors, or even worse, change my development box to use them (which will screw lots of things that again take time to reset properly).
If a paying customer reports problems with non-standard settings, it depends on the customer whether they will be addressed. If he orders 100 licenses, his chances are good. If he uses these settings because he is visually impaired, his chances are good. If he makes it part of the requirement, I will do it, but charge for the additional work.
Today, so much software doesn't work properly at a non-standard DPI that I don't think it's worth trying to fix it. The trouble-shooting FAQs for many applications just instruct users to switch to a normal font size for related problems. Microsoft acknowledged lack of proper DPI support in 3rd-party software and redesigned the display scaling methods in Windows Vista, where all GDI operations are scaled on a low level instead of relying on applications being aware of the DPI setting.
Final answer: it depends on your software's audience. If your software is likely to be used by disabled users, it might be worth the effort.
Apart from using the proper colour constants for standard colours I invest some extra effort for applications that we need to use internally on high DPI screens, or where customers may need this.
I have a unit with helper functions for determining proper sizes and placement margins, which compute these from the default GUI font and the standard values in dialog units as given in the UI guidelines, and with helper functions to compute the maximum width / height of an array of controls, place controls, things like that. For fixed size forms and dialogs I calculate the placement of controls once after translating their text with GNU gettext, for resizable forms I do this in an OnResize handler.
This gives good results, is however time-consuming. I would like to have something like the wxWidgets sizer functionality, which automates resizing once the minimum size of a control is set. I have never seen something similar for Delphi, though.
I occasionally test it myself for large fonts, because my Vista laptop is set to Large Fonts. Colors, not so much, but I rarely specify colors on controls.
However, proper resizing is pretty hard. I usually set Forms scale to false, so as that they won't resize wrong.
There are a few tools for auto-resizing forms. I did look into them, but never got around to testing them properly:
TFormResizer
ElasticForm - ironically (given the component's area) most of the text in this page won't show up in Chrome...
JVAutoFormSize (in JVCL - doesn't seem to be very useful from what I read)
Related
I've been trying different tiling WM's to see which one best fits my needs. Every time I try a new one, it looks good but I find other things that don't quite work the way I like. My requirements have evolved as I go. Initially, I didn't want to get into Awesome because having to learn Lua is not on my wish list but maybe I should give it a try IF it can do what I want better than the other tiling WM's out there.
I'm going to as specific as I can about what I want. I am running a 3440x1440 monitor. I want to use as much vertical space as possible (meaning, a full width, persistent but mostly empty status bar is not an option, but I do like the notification area and a date/time).
I understand it may not do everything exactly the way I want, which is oke. If it does more or less most of what I want I can weigh my options between Awesome and other tiling WM's (actually, only i3 which is what I'm using now but I'm open to better suggestions). I would very much appreciate it if people don't just say no to something it can't do, but say "no, but it can do ...". In other words, feel free to suggest alternatives that might be helpful as well.
Divide the screen in 3 columns, initially 30/45/25, with the right column split horizontally; Fully adjustable and resizable as needed during my work session;
Persistent layout; when closing the last application in a tile, I don't want that tile to disappear and the remaining tiles to resize. Just show an empty space and leave all tiles as they are.
tabbed tiles, so I see which applications are running in a tile (similar to i3).
Resizable tiles with the keyboard into 1 direction; When making the middle column/tile wider, I want that into a specific direction into another tile and leave the other side alone.
Certain applications I want to always launch into a specific tile. For instance, terminals always go into the right-most column top/bottom, browser/spotify always into the middle, atom/IDE always into the left. Some applications should always be floating. Obviously I want to be able to send them to a different tile after launch.
I don't want a 100% width status bar. It will be mostly empty which is a waste of screen estate. Preferably, I'd like a statusbar part of a tile, for example in the right-most tile, resizing with it. Otherwise I'd like it to be fixed to 30% and allow tiles which are not beneath it to use the full height of the screen. My reason for a statusbar is mute; I actually only want a notification area and a date time permanently visible. I don't need a "start menu", dmenu or similar is perfect, which I believe it has integrated.
Many thanks in advance!
The general answer is "Awesome configuration is code and it can do whatever you want". But there is a catch. Can Awesome be configured like you describe? Yes, totally. There is at least 2 distributions coming close enough (mine[1] and worron[2]) (at least for the tiling workflow, not the look).
The "catch" is that the workflow you describe isn't really the "Awesome way". Awesome is usually used as an automatic tiler. You have layouts that describe a workflow (code, web, internet) and manage the clients according to their programming. Manual tile management is rarely necessary once you have proper layouts. That doesn't mean you can't, I did, but it might be worth thinking outside the box and see if you can automate your workflow a bit further.
Also, the default layout system isn't very modern and makes it hard to implement the features you requested. My layout system (see link below) can be used as a module or as a branch and supports all features described above. Awesome is extremely configurable and it's components can be replaced by modules.
https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/pull/644
The layout "serialization" documentation is here:
https://elv13.github.io/libraries/awful.layout.html#awful.layout.suit.dynamic.manual
It is similar to i3 but has more layouts and containers. As for the "leaving blank space" part, it is configured using the fill_strategy:
https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/wibox.layout.ratio.html#wibox.layout.ratio.inner_fill_strategy
As a word of conclusion, I would note that what you ask is "work exactly like i3". If you want such thing, well, use i3. Awesome is a window manager framework. Its goal and purpose is to create a customized desktop shell / WM. If it's what you want, then go ahead and learn it, nothing else can come close to the possibility and the level of control you can get out of it. However it takes time and effort to get to the point where you have "your own perfect desktop". Our users perfect desktops:
https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/issues/1395
[1] https://gfycat.com/SmallTerribleAdamsstaghornedbeetle
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yNALqST1-Y
The WM your are looking for is herbstluftwm (hlwm). Its a manual tiling window manager. The tiles which you are talking about are called frames in hlwm. Each frame can contain multiple windows. A frame can also be empty. Only if you kill a frame the other frames will automatically resize. You can add new frames vertically and horizontally and resize them. Each frame can also have a different layout to organize the windows inside. The layout you are looking for is max. This will stack the windows inside a frame on each other. It doesn't show you tabs like i3 however. hlwm allows you to create rules to open certain applications always in certain frames and workspaces. hlwm doesn't have a statusbar buildin. I personally like to use tint2. It can be used as a replacement for your requirement to see running applications as tabs.
I thought scaling an application in FireMonkey should be easy as it is supposed to work an a Retina-Mac too. It seems there is some background magic which chooses another style than, but this doesn't seem to be the case in Windows.
In VCL there was TForm.Scaled which does the job (more or less).
For FireMonkey I found this Article by Embarcadero but it seems Embarcadero is not quite sure if this approach is useful as in XE5 the sampleproject "ControlsDemo" doesn't contain the scale-trackbar anymore. It also requires to have a root-TLayout present in all forms for which the scale factor can be set. I don't have such a element in my forms (and I'm afraid to add one as I cannot be sure if I run in another firemonkey bug than).
So how do I account for different DPI-Settings using FireMonkey?
Edit: I tried hacking TPlatFormWin and set CurrentScreenScale to 2 but it didn't work: I got black toolbars, but no scaling, but at least it used the HighRes alternative from the provided TImage.MultiResBitmap.
If anyone reads this... my experience with Windows desktop Firemonkey is that you have to take care of OS DPI setting manually and it's OK to put your controls in a top container (a TLayout) that's Scale is set according to the OS screen DPI settings (determined with some low level code).
However there are cases when you need to reverse this scaling - for example a Viewport3D must be scaled back 1/X to correctly show inside the scaled up container. Otherwise pixel level artifacts will show, image quality will be awful.
This scale up/scale back technique works nicely.
U can do something like this to change the root TLayout:
with 100 being the default
if windowsscale>0 then begin
LayoutScale.height:=ClientHeight*100/windowsscale;
LayoutScale.Width :=Clientwidth*100/windowsscale;
LayoutScale.Scale.X:=windowsscale/100;
LayoutScale.Scale.Y:=windowsscale/100;
end;
Recently I've discovered that TCanvas.StretchDraw will not work as expected for object which is a TIcon instance (quick look at TIcon.Draw and DrawIconEx method tells why). Delphi help acknowledges that fact. I know the workaround but I do not know the reason behind such design decision in VCL. Does anyone know why they decided to left TIcon untouched in this matter?
Icons are not regular bitmaps. This is mostly due to historical design and technical reasons.
It did make sense at time when icons were small 32x32 pixels large and 16 colors (good old days!) that icons were never to be stretched on screen.
But there is also a "common sense" technical reason. Such small bitmaps are usually very hard to be re-sized by an algorithm (and default GDI strech algoritm is very fast but produces also very bad result in respect to other interpolation modes, e.g. available with GDI+), so it was decided to embed a set of icons within the executable, as resources: one icon per size. The strech process benefits of being done at design time, at pixel level, by an icon designer. And - back those days - it was also much less resource consuming to use dedicated icons, with a reduced color palette.
Since you are supposed to have a set of icons with a pre-defined size for each, you do not need to use StrechDraw, but just select the right icon to display.
So if you want to display an icon with a given size, ensure you pickup the right size, or get the biggest icon and upsize it, using a temporary bitmap - or DrawIconEx(). Or, even better, do not use icons, but a bitmap, or a vectorial drawing if you expect huge picture size.
I have a problem where an application (written in Delphi) is behaving properly at default 96 DPI settings on all systems, but is behaving inconsistently at the "150% text size" (internally 144 dpi) setting, on different systems. It seems that on some systems, that certain text/font parts of my application are being stretched and on other systems, they aren't. I would have thought that my application, on a certain version of Windows (Win7), at a certain DPI, should behave the same way.
Either my application will make it known to Windows that it doesn't need the DPI Virtualization feature, or it will not. That much I understand. What I don't understand is how DPI changes can cause different appearance on two machines, both running Windows 7, both at 144 dpi, displaying the same fonts and forms at the same fixed sizes.
Is there some configuration-dependant elements involved in DPI Virtualization that I need to inspect in windows (registry etc)? Otherwise, how do you troubleshoot and know whether DPI virtualization is being done on your client window?
In Delphi, one has to set the TForm.Scaled property to false, if one doesn't want scaling. But what I don't understand is that when the main form's Scaled property is true, I cannot always predict the outcome.
What is most perplexing to me in my application, is that I have a control that only misbehaves in my large real application, but which does not misbehave in a standalone app where I am trying to debug just the control. To understand the control behaviour in a standalone app I was forced to make a demo app where I force the DPI awareness in via the manifest file. Then I can reproduce the control drawing glitch, although in a different form.
Here is the manifest file I use in my demo app, which exposes the problems that my controls have with dealing with high-dpi settings in windows. However, one strange thing I have found is that it is possible for an application
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<assembly xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" manifestVersion="1.0">
<asmv3:application xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
<asmv3:windowsSettings
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
<dpiAware>true</dpiAware>
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>
<assemblyIdentity version="14.0.3615.26342" processorArchitecture="*"
name="TestProject" type="win32"></assemblyIdentity>
<description>High DPI Controls Test App</description>
</assembly>
here's an example of one of about 30 places where the controls in my application are messed up when I disable DPI virtualization in my app. This particular glitch was solved by turning off the Scaled property in my form. But in other places, having TForm.Scaled=false causes the problem, whereas in some forms, it fixes it:
Update: It turns out that some of my controls use GDI+ and that font behaviour in GDI+ contexts is different than font behaviour in normal GDI contexts, at least for certain third-party controls that use GDI+. That's a major source of headaches. Secondly, there is the spotty test coverage and poorly-defined requirements, for DPI awareness, in the VCL. Some VCL controls are based on MS Common Controls, and while it's fair to say that the underlying common controls probably work fine in high-DPI situations, not all the VCL control wrappers can be guaranteed to work correctly. So, reviewing an application for high-DPI-awareness in all its controls, as well as correct behaviour in all available windows 7 themes:
aero glass on, at 96dpi (Default Win7 appearance on most modern hardware)
basic theme (aero glass off) but xp themes enabled
classic win2000 look where glass is off, as well as xp level themes,
high contrast white
high contrast black
Various Other-than-96-DPI settings
..and the list goes on., and you have a pretty heavy burden, as an application developer. Whether you are a delphi user and use the VCL, or you are an MFC/ATL C++ developer, it seems to me, that supporting all of the various quirky windows modes is a burden almost too heavy to bear. So most people don't bother. Am I right?
You need to manifest that your app is DPI aware with a section like this:
<asmv3:application xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
<dpiAware>true</dpiAware>
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>
If you do this then you won't get DPI virtualization.
You aren't meant to use DPI virtualization so I think there's little point trying to work out how it works. It could easily be dependent on graphics card drivers. It's almost impossible for us to explain why virtualization is behaving this way: you haven't even given any screenshots, hardware details etc. However, you simply shouldn't bother trying to diagnose this. Manifest as dpiaware and it's a non-problem.
For reference I offer you:
Writing High-DPI Win32 Applications
http://www.rw-designer.com/DPI-aware
It's actually a different question than that.
Your forms should not be getting larger with the user's DPI, they should be getting larger with font size.
Delphi's default form font is 8pt Tahoma.
The average 8pt Tahoma character is: 6.08px * 13px.
Starting with Windows Vista, the default font is 9pt Segoe UI.
The average 9pt Segoe UI character is: 6.81px * 15px.
Your Windows applications should be honoring the user's font preference (i.e. IconTitleFont).
My Windows font preference is 12pt Segoe UI, whose average character size is: 8.98px * 21px:
This means that if you designed your form at Tahoma 8pt (13px high), you need to scale the form, and all the child controls, by 162%:
scaleFactor = (userFontSize / designedFontSize)
= 21px / 13px
= 1.615
If you're careful you'll notice that changing DPI is just a special case of changing the font size. Your 8pt font is still 8pt, but 8pt translates into more pixels. If you run 131dpi (136% zoom setting in Windows 7) then:
9pt Segoe UI, 96dpi = 6.81px x 15px
9pt Segoe UI, 131dpi = 8.98px x 21px
Note: It's not a coincidence that i chose 131dpi and 12pt as my examples. At work i run 96dpi but 12pt. At home i run 9pt but 131dpi. Both have the same pixel font height, 21px.
In the end you need to call ScaleControl by the size difference:
procedure StandardizeFormFont(Form: TForm);
var
iconTitleFontName: string;
iconTitleFontSizePixels: Integer;
currentFontSizePixels: Integer;
begin
GetIconTitleFont(iconTitleFontName, iconTitleFontSizePixels);
//Change font face first
//Some fonts are inheriently taller than others
//(even at the same point size)
Form.Font.Name := iconTitleFontName;
//Get the form's current font height (in pixels)
currentFontSizePixels := Form.Font.Height; //negative number, but so is iconTitleFontSizePixels
Form.ScaleBy(iconTitleFontSizePixels, currentFontSizePixels);
end;
In reality this code is very simplistic. Many child controls need to be updated manually:
listview columns need to get wider
controls with ParentFont = false need to have their font's adjusted
TImage controls need to stretch their image to the new size
toolbar's need to use larger images
In reality we use a super-fancy version of StandardizeFormFont that recursively goes through all controls on the form and does it's best to adjust each control based on what it is.
Every control is Delphi is supposed to override it's ScaleControl method, and make the adjustments it needs to:
protected
procedure ChangeScale(M, D: Integer); override;
The "Custom DPI Setting" window has a "Use Windows XP style DPI scaling". That might explain the different behaviour.
It turns out that the quirks in my Application when the system DPI changed away from the default 96 dpi value, are in three general camps:
Some of the application's controls use GDI and some controls use GDI+. There are some differences in how a GDI and GDI+ font renders at different DPI, at least in the controls I am using.
I use a framework called VCL in delphi. In this Delphi VCL framework, some forms have TForm.Scaled=true, and some have TForm.Scaled=false. Because it requires you to think about each control in a scaled form, it is very common to have things happen that you as a UI designer will find "ugly" or unacceptable in a Scaled form. Turning Scaled off, you are left with forms that are either stretched by Windows 7 itself, in high DPI settings (DPI Virtualization mode) or which appear small and therefore, ignore the user's "request" if you like, for a 144 dpi version of your 96 dpi UI. Other people might be using other framworks in other languages, or might even be using something really old fashioned, like the Dialog Box Editor for Visual C++, where you design dialogs in "Dialog Units", which is another way of trying to separate general dialog layout, from a 1:1 correspondence to pixels. Scaling, stretching, and layout controls are a general part of UI design that must be solved in a way that matches platform requirements. In my case, the VCL does a great job of letting me design a 96 DPI glass-enabled aero app, and works great at other DPI ratings, but most of my custom controls don't. So it's another reason to stick with the controls that come with the VCL: If you care about high DPI support, your job gets harder when you try to make high DPI support work.
DPI Virtualization in turn, is controlled by a manifest setting that you must expressly include in your application. Since my application already had a custom manifest (not the one that is included with your Delphi app when you click the Enable-windows-themes checkbox in the project settings), I was able to turn this DPI virtualization on and off again, and test my application in both cases. I found that my application was not ready to run without DPI Virtualization, and thus I left Windows to its default behaviour. Other people's applications might easily work with DPI Virtualization disabled, if they use 100% vcl controls, with forms that either use Form scaling, or some other technique, to appropriately size themselves (such as the VCL ExpressLayout control from DevExpress) at a variety of font sizes, and DPI pitches.). It seems to me, that in the end, the VCL is functional enough, but that for really industrial-strength solutions, a more advanced framework than the VCL is required, to comprehensively deal with issues like "high DPI environments" properly, and that third party controls are generally not designed to work even as well as the current VCL works, in these cases. Such framework concerns are very much in evidence in the WPF framework (Microsoft) and in Java (wing), but are not part of the classic "Win16/Win32 common control framework" of the VCL.
All in all, these changes are not that different (complex) now, than in the old days, when Windows XP and other versions of Windows offered you a choice of "font sizes", whereas now, the Windows 7 UI experience tries to bury the font point size options pretty deeply, and instead offers you a "text size" changing user interface that modifies the system DPI below the surface. Both of these ways of changing your user experience result in almost every user having problems with at least one major commercial application that doesn't look, or work correctly with the resulting changes. As ultra-high dot-pitch displays become more common in the consumer PC landscape, this problem will probably get worse and worse, and UI design around more suitable frameworks will be required.
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Closed 9 years ago.
In the very near future my development setup will be upgraded and part of the deal will be dual monitors (yay!)
At least one of the monitors, possibly both, will be widescreen.
I've heard of developers using a second monitor, especially a widescreen monitor, in portrait mode. It allows for many more lines on the screen (albeit narrower) and runs a bit like having a long page of code.
Does anyone out there use this and think it's more effective?
I actually have 3 widescreen monitors in portrait mode and yes, it's a fantastic way to work. There's so much less scrolling around and you can fit all your debug / output / reference windows on screen at once.
The problem with using two monitors is that you'll generally be working on one main one and have output (or whatever on another). If you do have two, set it up so that your primary monitor is directly in front of you and the other (less frequently used) one is off to one side. I find that to be the best way to use a dual-monitor set up as it reduces RSI from being permanently twisted to look at a particular screen.
Additionally, there are some programs available to provide virtual screen splits which I've fund very useful for large/widescreen monitor setups.
[edit] ..and yes, you should write functions short enough to fit on a single page, but being able to see more functions at any one time can often make development easier in my experience :-)
[edit2] Running Visual-Studio-esque IDEs in portrait on a widescreen monitor is fantastic when it comes to debugging compile errors as you have more useable space to see code and errors at the same time. I suppose you could argue that if you compile regularly enough though, you shouldn't see that many errors at one time? ...but who codes like that? ;-)
Since you shouldn't write functions that are longer than a screen, making the screen much longer is a little bit of cheating, isn't it? ;)
Anyway, I found portrait mode not really better when coding, and only with my old 17" widescreen in portrait mode was viewing / editing documents better. With two large screens in landscape mode, You can put two pages on a screen when viewing documents, and have many tool windows open at both sides of the IDE's text editor. So no, portrait mode is not better, unless you have four of them to make up a really large screen (there was a photo of such a setup on a Microsoft blog, but I don't remember where).
There are some applications where portrait is still better, though, e.g. if you have to show a document in large resolution, or if you have some monitor (as in network monitor) running and want to see more lines at once.
I can't imagine how that would speed up productivity. In my opinion, it is always easier to scroll up/down than left/right.
It depends on which IDE you use, if any.
Microsoft Visual Studio likes to take up a lot of the width of the monitor with its “Toolbox” and “Solution Explorer”, so I find it works better on a landscape monitor. As it will not let you undock an editor window, you could not even drag a code editor to a second monitor that was in portrait mode.
Also consider how your customers are most likely to have their monitors set up. You may wish to write any UI code with the same setup, so you get a feel for what the application will be like to use.
Depends how big your monitor is. We have 1 28" monitor in landscape and 2 24" monitors in portrait which flank the big monitor.
Works great for pair-programming!
At work, I run my primary monitor (secondary is the laptop screen), in portrait mode. I really like it. I've become spoiled to seeing more code at once. I don't find that it encourages longer methods at all. Occasionally, I run across code that is a bit too wide since the IDE sidebars cramp it a bit, but I largely use Eclipse (Rational Application Developer, but Eclipse-based), so s quick double-click maximizes the code window, and it's very useful. Another double-click and I have my sidebars back.
I also find it a very useful orientation for my email.
I recommend it highly.
Portrait mode widescreen monitors work very nicely for edting code, thank you. However, some monitors have poor viewing angles on one dimension, which would usually be vertical but becomes horizontal in portrait mode. This can make the colours bad or unusable if everything isn't aligned correctly.
I have never given it a try but I would imagine it would work pretty well. I personally like to keep my lines fairly short, and wide screens tend to give me fewer lines of code, so I would give it a try.
It all comes down to personal preference however, what ever allows you to be the most productive and works best for you is the way to go.
For me it's not effective at all. I use IDEs, so in landscape mode I have sidebars to navigate code, navigate project etc.
It's not silly but a matter of opinion. A widescreen in portrait is very nice for writing code, code width has never really been an issue, and being able to see more line of code on the screen is always nice.
The other reason to put a widescreen in portrait is so it matches the height of your other monitor, for example a 30" widescreen next to a 22" widescreen in portrait have close to the same height.
It all comes down to your preference.
I just have one big monitor at my home office.
I tried it once. I didn't like it. I usually have an IDE and IDEs are perfect for widescreen. It's faster to jump around if you can see your function list on the right, file list on the left, etc.
Also, I try to keep my functions small so this usually isn't a problem (I have dual 24"). If your functions are reasonably small, and you have widescreen, you can show two files side by side which is often more useful. Some editors allow you to split the window and scroll to two different parts of the same file. This is also very useful is far better than having 100+ lines on the screen. With my settings, I have 60 lines per screen on an editor. If I split the editor, I can see 120. If I do it again on the other monitor, I can see 240. That's quite a bit of code and generally only useful for very different parts of it.
If you're working mostly with text (as most programmers or other technical folks do), or even documents, then portait mode is much more valuable. In fact, the general trend in displays is all the wrong direction: aspect ratios are squishing landscape displays to a mail slot to better fit the format of movies. Personally, I have never watched a movie on my computers (laptop or desktop), and I'm not about to start now - that's what I have a TV for!
In reality, vertical pixels are the most valuable asset in computing - do whatever you can to get more of them - you won't be sorry you spent the money! I won't even buy a laptop with less than 1024-1080 vertical pixels, since that's the minumum required to display a full page PDF at a readable resolution, and (much) more is better. (Since PDFs make up a large portion of today's online documentation/manuals, that's a very big concern.) You should only think about width after you've got enough vertical pixels.
What I really want is a 15.4" or 16" laptop with a portrait screen - these should still be wide enough to package a full-size keyboard into the base - a FlyBook-style pivot arm would be nice, but isn't required.
I found understanding the intent of related functions are easier when you print them first on paper than understanding them directly from screen, never fails, why? Because you can easily review many lines of code at one glance, no need for incessant scrolling.
The same thing with monitor oriented in portrait mode, you can easily understand the intent of multiple related functions, re-factored or otherwise. But don't let having portrait screen be an excuse to write a function with many lines.
Writing this on stackoverflow using portrait screen :-)
I can easily see many posts at one glance :-)
If you are working with print material, yes, as for source, why not full screen your IDE and close the task panes you do not need?
I find portrait is only useful to me if I'm working on a web site, being able to see the entire page at once helps.
I would say if the monitor is large enough you don't need portrait mode (24" and higher) for writing code.
If the monitor is smaller than that, then portrait mode is preferable.
Ideally what you would have is a single 30" (2560 x 1600) as widescreen to work on your code along with utilities comfortably open nearby and a second smaller monitor nearby to preview the results (I am speaking about web coding specifically here but it would probably apply to most other coding as well - a screen the size of your target audience's screens).
The 30" screens have really come down in price now so it's probably worth the jump up. A 24" screen does have the advantage of significantly larger text at default font sizes. The text on 30" monitors can get to be a bit of grind unless you move up to 14pt.
Good luck.
I have 2 19" monitors currently. One I keep in landscape and one I keep in portrait mode. I find that working on documentation or reading long web pages is easier on the portrait screen. I have used this setup for coding also and find that it does help, however it was a learned habit. lol