GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 781343
Add "compact" variant for Adwaita
Last modified: 2018-05-02 18:24:29 UTC
Just like Adwaita has a dark variant, it would be nice to allow certain applications to have a "compact" variant to opt into. A compact Adwaita would be useful for applications with large content areas but a low number of controls; a "compact" UI density would allow them to display more content without collapsing controls into nested hierarchies, like multiple menu buttons or popovers. For instance, a compact variant would: - reduce the padding around labels and inside buttons - minimize (or even drop) the rounded corners border around image buttons - reduce, or remove, the separators between groups of elements See, for instance: https://people-mozilla.org/~shorlander/projects/photon/Mockups/macOS.html
Frankly speaking I don't like much the idea, apart the fact it's basically another theme to maintain, which is doable though, we'll end up with two pretty different interface languages prably kind of randomly used, I'd prefer to approach such a thing on a widget by widget (or case by case) basis.
Fixing bug 761435 to scale parts of Adwaita with the font size could help imo. It would allow users to reduce the font size to get more content on the screen.
Christoph, I think that's a different issue though. Emmanuele, I'd like to know about specific use cases, if that's a general problem, better to shrink adwaita proper directly. If you'd like, for example, full height buttons on the headerbar, that should be taken care on a case by case basis (maybe some generic style class), since that makes, for example, button grouping impossible, and non flat buttons kind of tricky, hence we can't just shoot a variant out, but we need apps collaboration on that.
(In reply to Christoph Reiter (lazka) from comment #2) > Fixing bug 761435 to scale parts of Adwaita with the font size could help > imo. It would allow users to reduce the font size to get more content on the > screen. The point of this bug is not to allow users to control the padding or UI density: it's for application developers to do so, just like they can control whether or not their application should use a dark theme.
(In reply to Lapo Calamandrei from comment #3) > Emmanuele, I'd like to know about specific use cases, if that's a general > problem, better to shrink adwaita proper directly. I don't have a specific application, per se. There is a class of applications that favour their content above their "chrome", and in some cases benefit from a higher UI density. Shoving controls into trees (via popovers or menu buttons) is not the solution to increase the UI density, in that case, because it makes the UI more difficult to control. I don't think a blanket "shrinking" of the generic Adwaita would be a good idea; it could be interesting to add a "compact" CSS for specific controls, like we have an "osd" class, as opposed to a straight-up variant of the theme. Application developers would, then, use the "compact" class on specific UI elements, just like they use the "linked" one. Of course, proliferation of classes also implies a certain degree of interaction between them; that's why I proposed a theme variant instead. That has the downside of requiring a "compact-dark" variant.
IMHO a full blown compact theme is a no-go, it could mean, say, having different popovers from app to app. I'm all for the compact css for specific elements though (via generic style classes), I think that's the best solution. I'd still need to know what is needed though to try implementing that, testcases very welcome.
Allan was, a long time ago, interested in trying his hand at updating the design of a major user of tight controls and toolbars, to see what the challenges would be in "porting it" to a GNOME-ish design. Maybe that'd be a good test case.
One could simply take Adwaita and divide all the paddings and margins by 2 plus reduce all the min-height and min-width properties by e.g. 20%. This can be easily scripted and maintained.
*** Bug 659647 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 369761 [details] Far too big titlebar A compact theme is really needed, there is so much space lost ! Take a look at the screenshot, the titlebar is insanely big !
We all know how Adwaita looks and the common objections to it. It's not as easy as just making a compact theme, though. Whether as a variant (which are going away) or a 'first class' theme, I doubt anyone really wants to have to maintain another axis of variation anyway; we'd then have a 2x2 matrix of themes for dark/light and normal/compact. Classes to make things compact seem like a fair idea, but things like titlebars generally (including of non-headerbar apps) would need to be baked into the theme generally, so that'd be a larger design discussion. In the meantime, you can just write some simple user CSS to make all titlebars smaller on your desktop, if you want it that much (I'll get around to doing that myself some day).
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