Widescreens are everywhere and it’s now starting to more seriously affect GUI design. Designers are forced to have to think differently. What was ok for just 4:3..isn’t anymore. It’s now almost impossible to get a 4:3 TV, (Best Buy officially stopped carrying analog TV’s a few months ago), Laptops and desktop monitors are no different. It seems thats all they sell and that’s all people want to buy.

In a recent look at our web hits for ConceptShare.com we are showing that close to 50% are using widescreens. This may actually be even higher for our own target market assuming some of the traditional proportions coming up might be media, financial and casual visitors. Another interesting point is that there are over 296 different resolutions most of which are wide…Is that even possible? Well it is… I checked again.

Height is quickly getting lost in favor of width. Things like favorite Links, virus software and others are taking up even more valuable browser height with rows pushing the viewing area further and further down. As a designer you feel like a bed of nails is coming down on you like they do in the cartoons.Arrgh!

At ConceptShare we saw the number of users with widescreen monitors increase dramatically during the first year of development. We have recently, (now with V2) managed to squeeze out some more vertical space by adding a second column on the right side and eliminating some of the menus that were below taking up valuable vertical real estate. We felt that the widescreens can afford the extra menu column and if you don’t have one or just happen to love the extra room, we’ve added a customizable interface so you position your layout anyway you like and even save it as well. This should appease almost everyone because you can at the very least customize the layout the same way as v1 looked. For those that push the limits of widescreen heaven, (and you Apple 30” 2560×1600 people know who you are), ConceptShare becomes a dream with a very large work area because the interface was built to scale and benefit those with large monitors… because that’s how we would want it.

Look at the difference between V1 and V2 released earlier this month.



ConceptShare V1- Default Screen @1920×1200


ConceptShare V2 – Default Screen @ 1920×1200

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