Digital Home Thoughts: Calling All Developers: Code Wide, Not Tall

Above is a screen shot from Gspot, the popular video codec detection tool. Notice anything? That's right, it won't fit on the screen. This screen shot was taken on a Dell Mini 10, a netbook with a 10.1 inch screen running at 1024 x 576 resolution. I've seen this before with several applications, so this is a general call-out to all developers: with the booming popularity of netbooks, and with many new laptops in general hitting the 1280 x 720 mark for resolution, there's just not a lot of vertical screen resolution on mobile screens. Developers seem to have taken for granted that resolution and screen size would continue to increase, and as such they didn't see the decrease in resolution that netbooks bring to the table. Developers, please "think small" and opt for wider, rather than taller, displays.