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<blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 8079997" data-attributes="member: 11999"><p>It's not wasted space, it's negative space. It's an important element in visual design. I find the 4e and 5e screens much more usable in play than any of the older screens, as I have a much easier time finding what I'm looking for. You can tell they're designed for ease and speed of use in play, while older edition screens seemed to simply try and cram us much information as possible into a limited space.</p><p></p><p>The 3.x screens were the worst IMO. The densely-packed, uniformly-formatted tables give me a headache just looking at them. Back when I played 3e, the screen was mainly useful for hiding my maps and notes. I rarely actually looked up anything on them.</p><p></p><p>Back in the early 90s, I used to print out my own sheets to slide over the panels of my old 1e and 2e screens. My dad was starting up in desktop publishing at the time, so I used PageMaker on his computer to create the layouts (and print on his laser printer). Without knowing the term "negative space", I intuitively gave my layout a lot more breathing room than TSR's screens.</p><p></p><p>Looking back, I've never gotten much use out of GM screens with densely-packed charts and minimal whitespace. Seems like I've always found them too much trouble to bother with.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps not surprisingly, I strongly prefer screens in landscape orientation to the old portrait ones. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /> Research does indicate that humans demonstrate stronger performance on visual scanning tasks requiring horizontal eye movement than they do on tasks requiring vertical eye movement. So that may very well play a role in the move to landscape screens.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Keldryn, post: 8079997, member: 11999"] It's not wasted space, it's negative space. It's an important element in visual design. I find the 4e and 5e screens much more usable in play than any of the older screens, as I have a much easier time finding what I'm looking for. You can tell they're designed for ease and speed of use in play, while older edition screens seemed to simply try and cram us much information as possible into a limited space. The 3.x screens were the worst IMO. The densely-packed, uniformly-formatted tables give me a headache just looking at them. Back when I played 3e, the screen was mainly useful for hiding my maps and notes. I rarely actually looked up anything on them. Back in the early 90s, I used to print out my own sheets to slide over the panels of my old 1e and 2e screens. My dad was starting up in desktop publishing at the time, so I used PageMaker on his computer to create the layouts (and print on his laser printer). Without knowing the term "negative space", I intuitively gave my layout a lot more breathing room than TSR's screens. Looking back, I've never gotten much use out of GM screens with densely-packed charts and minimal whitespace. Seems like I've always found them too much trouble to bother with. Perhaps not surprisingly, I strongly prefer screens in landscape orientation to the old portrait ones. :-) Research does indicate that humans demonstrate stronger performance on visual scanning tasks requiring horizontal eye movement than they do on tasks requiring vertical eye movement. So that may very well play a role in the move to landscape screens. [/QUOTE]
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