Bravo to this article. The phenomenon is exemplified by Slack and open platforms that follows its design lead, such as the Riot client for Matrix. Legacy chat

Bravo to this article. The phenomenon is exemplified by Slack and open platforms that follows its design lead, such as the Riot client for Matrix. Legacy chat clients from the 1990s and 2000s could fit a hundred rows of chat text on a normal 30 inch monitor. Slack and Riot can display perhaps as many as 30 lines. The reason is a bunch of excess padding between lines, the injection of handles/names in the vertical space (because width is precious on small devices?), unreasonably large circular avatar images, and a host of other "mobile first" design quirks. Taken all together, we have a user interface that squanders screen real-estate with abandon. While a legacy chat user might have chat in a small side window, a Slack or Riot user will more often than not have their chat application fully maximized or using a substantial portion of a side monitor. It's a regrettable pattern but I don't see much momentum on the reverse course.