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The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users.

The padding is there to make the interface cleaner. It forces developers to be more concise with their components as well as making navigation easier for users. Keep in mind Gnome is meant to be easy to use, not easy on the screen real-estate. If you want a minimalist UI, there are a million alternatives in linux land

aaronbrethorst 16y ago
That's a laudable goal, but it seems like it just wastes space. I don't want minimalism, I want greatness.
felxh 16y ago
I always wondered about that myself. How exactly do huge UI elements make an UI cleaner and easier to use (we are not talking about touch screens or accessibility features here)? I would say that proper spacing and layout/grouping are much more important for designing a clean UI.
man1sh 16y ago
No, seriously. The padding is just too much, to the level that it wastes space.I know too much clutter is bad, but that doesn't mean GNOME people have to increase the padding to this extent. Can we have a middle ground for padding? Nor too less, nor too much.
- junkbit 16y ago
  If you install Gnome Color Chooser you can select 'compact profile' which is a global setting for padding. It shrinks all of your buttons and other white space without you having to edit the theme by hand: sudo apt-get install gnome-color-chooser Find it in System→Prefs menu after install
  - man1sh 16y ago
    Thanks for the information. BTW I have always hand tweaked the font, DPI, and all appearance based settings on a fresh install of any GNOME based distro. I am not enraged on the padding issue, but it would be still nice to see optimal configuration out of box.
burriko 16y ago
This has bothered me for years. Everything just looks so chunky and inelegant. The difference really hits home if you compare Rhythmbox and iTunes (OS X version, not Windows) side by side. Rhythmbox just appears to be wasting so much space. Arguing that it makes the interface cleaner might seem correct in theory, but in practice it really doesn't seem to hold true. Especially when you compare to OS X, which has an extremely clean interface without any over padding of elements.
- heresy 16y ago
  In addition to the excessive padding, what bothers me, is that the typeface choices in Linux are so oversized and ugly. And the way Linux renders Segoe UI is ghastly compared to the Windows rendering. If you want a smaller font size, you're out of luck since the padding seems to be assuming that you're going to have those big 5/20 vision fonts, so your buttons have a tiny bit of text in the middle, and acres of space round them.

aaronbrethorst 16y ago

That's a laudable goal, but it seems like it just wastes space. I don't want minimalism, I want greatness.

felxh 16y ago

I always wondered about that myself. How exactly do huge UI elements make an UI cleaner and easier to use (we are not talking about touch screens or accessibility features here)? I would say that proper spacing and layout/grouping are much more important for designing a clean UI.

man1sh 16y ago

No, seriously. The padding is just too much, to the level that it wastes space.I know too much clutter is bad, but that doesn't mean GNOME people have to increase the padding to this extent. Can we have a middle ground for padding? Nor too less, nor too much.

junkbit 16y ago
If you install Gnome Color Chooser you can select 'compact profile' which is a global setting for padding. It shrinks all of your buttons and other white space without you having to edit the theme by hand: sudo apt-get install gnome-color-chooser Find it in System→Prefs menu after install
- man1sh 16y ago
  Thanks for the information. BTW I have always hand tweaked the font, DPI, and all appearance based settings on a fresh install of any GNOME based distro. I am not enraged on the padding issue, but it would be still nice to see optimal configuration out of box.

burriko 16y ago

This has bothered me for years. Everything just looks so chunky and inelegant. The difference really hits home if you compare Rhythmbox and iTunes (OS X version, not Windows) side by side. Rhythmbox just appears to be wasting so much space. Arguing that it makes the interface cleaner might seem correct in theory, but in practice it really doesn't seem to hold true. Especially when you compare to OS X, which has an extremely clean interface without any over padding of elements.

heresy 16y ago
In addition to the excessive padding, what bothers me, is that the typeface choices in Linux are so oversized and ugly. And the way Linux renders Segoe UI is ghastly compared to the Windows rendering. If you want a smaller font size, you're out of luck since the padding seems to be assuming that you're going to have those big 5/20 vision fonts, so your buttons have a tiny bit of text in the middle, and acres of space round them.