GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 659647
Theme elements like titlebars, menubars, tabs are excessively large
Last modified: 2018-05-02 15:14:58 UTC
I have to ask why things on a Gnome desktop seem to big a bloated. On OSX, my Firefox browser toolbar (I believe rendered with Gtk) seems huge in comparison. I'm pretty sure the resolution is the same. So why are GTK apps so ... big? It's so bad that I actually feel I have less desktop booted in to Fedora 15/Gnome 3. I realise this isn't a very concrete bug report, but hopefully there can be some discussion on this. I'll try to attach some screen shots to show the point.
(In reply to comment #0) > I have to ask why things on a Gnome desktop seem to big a bloated. On OSX, my > Firefox browser toolbar (I believe rendered with Gtk) seems huge in comparison. Firefox does not use GTK on OS X or Windows. > I'm pretty sure the resolution is the same. So why are GTK apps so ... big? this is theme issue... > It's so bad that I actually feel I have less desktop booted in to Fedora > 15/Gnome 3. ... that has already been solved during the development of GNOME 3.2, as you can see from the log entries about padding and spacing in the Adwaita theme: http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-themes-standard/log/ > I realise this isn't a very concrete bug report, but hopefully there can be > some discussion on this. Bugzilla is not for discussing: it's for reporting bugs. if you have a concrete bug about the padding and spacing of the Adwaita theme then you should open a bug against it. the product is "gnome-themes" and the component is "Adwaita GTK3 Theme": https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=gnome-themes-standard you should also contact the design team: http://live.gnome.org/Design closing this bug as invalid, as it's not really a bug.
Created attachment 197116 [details] Illustration Here you can see how much space is lost, and why it feels like things are more crowded.
Reopening in the right place. Sorry about that.
(In reply to comment #2) > Created an attachment (id=197116) [details] > Illustration > > Here you can see how much space is lost, and why it feels like things are more > crowded. I count a six pixel height difference between titlebars on GNOME 3 and OS X. Is this what you are referring to?
Well, the whole of the bookmarks bar, tabs bar, as in the top part of the UI is a lot bigger. A lot of Gnome feels this way though, with bigger fonts and buttons and things, it just doesn't feel as neat and compact if you follow. I could try to find some more screen shots if needs be.
(In reply to comment #5) > Well, the whole of the bookmarks bar, tabs bar, as in the top part of the UI is > a lot bigger. Oh I see! The example threw me off... > A lot of Gnome feels this way though, with bigger fonts and buttons and things, > it just doesn't feel as neat and compact if you follow. Some things are certainly bigger in GNOME 3, although we have been working to reduce some of the padding, as Emmanuele has already shown. (You might find it interesting to compare the current UI with the theme mockups [1]). I know that the theme has been getting some work done on it recently, and I'm confident that it's in hand. I would be interested in having a discussion about font sizes though... [1] http://gitorious.org/gnome-design/gnome-design/blobs/master/mockups/theming/widget-factory.png
This is still an issue with 3.12 with stock Adwaita. I've attached some screenshots to illustrate what I mean. Admittedly the first two are from Eclipse, which I'm pretty sure uses GTK2 (since it's still unusable with GTK3), but the point is that it's the same issue, and if you compared to a Mac it would be even worse. * Stock Eclipse: http://i.imgur.com/xYR9GxV.png * Same view with hacked theme: http://i.imgur.com/15JqHga.png * WebStorm/IntelliJ: http://i.imgur.com/SOKXmI4.png The last one is just for comparison. Since it's using Java Swing, it is completely desktop-theme unaware (i.e. has nothing to do with Gnome/GTK, which is why I posted it) but just goes to show what you can do without all the extra whitespace. It still looks quite presentable (well, the kerning sucks, as do the icons, but that's not the point here). See also bug 719881 which is a similar issue (titlebar height).
This is still an issue in gnome 3.20. Titlebars are still excessively large. As is the menu bar. And the terminal tabs are also now growing in vertical size. This wastes a large proportion of the screen, especially on a 16:9 display. OSX has much smaller titlebars and menu bar, yet still is aesthetically pleasing. So the "white space is good design" argument is not reasonable, it can be shown there are other examples where there is minimal whitespace and yet the "design" is considered good. Many users discuss this as an issue in gnome. In order to have gnome appear to be a modern, clean desktop environment, it should be willing to "get out the way" and have smaller title and menu bars in the system by default. Why are still having to "customise" and argue that this is an issue in gnome?
title = fixed. See also the idea of providing a compact version of Adwaita in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=781343 - proposed as more of an opt-in for specific apps, but really should be selectable desktop-wide like :dark is (with Tweaks, but who doesn't use that?) *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 781343 ***
(sorry for spam, got mixed up and didn't mean to mark as a dupe)
Daniel, a compact version of adwaita is yet another theme basically, also the theme doesn't control all the spacings (unfortunatelly) to make a compact version proportioned (worst offender headerbar child widgets spacing and dialog paddings). Also all the applications should ship a compact version of their custom css.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/372.