[RockdaMan]

Here’s the tablet conundrum: I find that full-size (i.e. iPad or Xoom scale) devices often sit most comfortably in the hand when held sideways. And, during a recent presentation I attended on app design for the tablet form factor, someone pointed out that a landscape-mode tablet, unlike a portrait-mode handset, recalls the shape of computer monitor; so presumably the user-experience lessons we’ve learned designing for monitors begin once again to apply.

Well, maybe. But what I foresee is a chance for overexuberant site designers to pack in marginalia and widgets and gadgets and social-media dung and so on ad nauseum. Thus requiring the services of things like Readability.

One solution on a tablet is to emulate book design and go two-column. But electric text wants to be scrolled, which doesn’t sit well with columnar layouts.

So hold your damn tablet the right way up. That’s the way the information wants to be, anyhow.

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/20.../Portrait-Mode