Idea
#7961: Make Ubuntu more efficient with screen real-estate
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130
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Written by helloothere the 1 May 08 at 23:53.
Category: Look and Feel.
Related to:
Nothing/Others.
Status: New
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Description
One thing that I noticed when I tried Ubuntu for the first time, coming from Windows, is that you have less space on your screen because of some certain settings. For example, window buttons are very large, menus (file, edit, view, etc) in windows are also bigger, possibly because Ubuntu uses a bigger font... I notice this the most in Firefox, where the toolbars at the top of the window take up about 1.5 times more space than the equivalent in Windows.
I would really like the Ubuntu developers to work on making toolbars, etc. take up less space and thus allow more space for the real important parts of the window, which is the content, whether that is a website you are viewing, the "sheet of paper" in a word processor, or anything else.
The reason for the larger menus in Ubuntu may be because of accessibility needs, but for the ordinary, non-disabled user, it doesn't make sense to give them less working space on their desktop.
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Comments
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Eldmannen wrote on the 2 May 08 at 01:10
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I have also noticed that everything in Ubuntu seems to be larger...
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tgape wrote on the 2 May 08 at 01:14
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It should be fairly easy to prompt for font size for menus when a user logs in the first time. It should also be fairly easy to find where to change this later on. (I'd suggest something, but I haven't gotten GUI yet.)
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Vadim P. wrote on the 2 May 08 at 01:22
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No, thanks, my attention is already divided well enough. Please don't make use of this "real estate" and my attention for even more things I can't keep track of. I'll open more windows if I have to.
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slashdotaccount wrote on the 2 May 08 at 03:28
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GNOME plans a compact theme for the 2.24 release. Go look at their roadmap page.
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steve196 wrote on the 2 May 08 at 10:39
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Icons and buttons and writing should be scalable and configurable. After all Ubuntu will use monitors of all sizes and resolutions and the power of the users eyes also varies greatly. No default will fit them all.
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Vadim P. wrote on the 2 May 08 at 12:59
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... and that already is!
Fonts are configurable via System - Preferences - Appearance - Fonts, along with the icons in the Inferface category.
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Stinger wrote on the 2 May 08 at 20:03
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While I personally love having tiny everything and maximizing screen real estate, it's not easily accessible for other users (like my dad, who has to magnify any text many times in order to read it.)
I find it easy enough to configure Linux for high screen real-estate. If you're a real-estate extremist, replace GNOME as a Window Manager with one of these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#X_Window_System
I personally don't go that far, I just customize GNOME through the "Appearance" dialog from Properties. It's not that hard.
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johno wrote on the 2 May 08 at 21:34
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As mentioned, the fonts dialog lets you change some of this. I routinely set the titlebar font much smaller, and the application font a bit smaller. The default themes do still have a lot of space though. There is the clearlooks compact theme which overcomes that, but it trades off appearance.
In terms of screen space, Ubunutu also has two toolbars, which other windows can't be placed on top of, plus a menu bar and titlebar on each application. Gains could be made by somehow rationalising these.
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jiu wrote on the 3 May 08 at 08:22
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This is more of a GNOME problem than anything else. One way to get smaller menus is to use a different gnome theme. Try the "Mist" theme under window decorations (System > Preferences > Appearance). It will also be faster because of no rounded windows.
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jiu wrote on the 3 May 08 at 08:24
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another way is to use KDE instead of GNOME. It's generally got smaller icons and fonts by default.
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wearzeep wrote on the 3 May 08 at 16:59
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Yes, yes yes please!
This is one thing that makes gnome suck.
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asham wrote on the 4 May 08 at 11:36
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I was so bugged by it that I moved on to Kubuntu and KDE (version 4).
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belovedmonster wrote on the 5 May 08 at 12:39
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I use Xubuntu simply because I find Gnome's GUI to be way too big, both in terms of the icon size and also the gaps between icons. Moving from one item to the next in the menu just feels clunky as hell.
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layla_1 wrote on the 7 May 08 at 02:38
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anyone who uses an Asus EEE will vote yes I think ;)
Fluxbox is almost compulsory on my EEE
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skip wrote on the 6 Aug 08 at 08:35
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"anyone who uses an Asus EEE will vote yes I think ;)
Fluxbox is almost compulsory on my EEE "
Except I use XFCE :) and it's OK
And on my laptop with GNOME, I just don't care, my screen looks way too big :)
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