White Space (Re: UI suggestion: gnome-dock)

[famrom idecnet com (Guillermo S. Romero / unnamed / Familia Romero)]

>> Ok, but the GNOME toolbars are huge. In MS products, the toolbar buttons
>> are pretty small, and can fit on the same line as a menubar because of
>> this. in GNOME, the toolbars are much bigger, and would cause a huge
>> gap. As others have said, it is possible to do this, I just question the
>> value of it.
>In my opion these things should be smaller, everything in gnome is too
>big, especially default buttons, dialogs, etc, I never understood why they
>are created with so much empty space.  This has always been one of my
>biggest complaints about the look of gnome.

Agree. Specially in 800 * 600 Gnome looks "bad". Some people still use that
resolution (old 14" monitors, old cards, or notebooks).

Proposal:
    - All apps should have less white space (or the option to have less).
    - The first step is that every (all, todas) app that has bars must have
the options for: text and icons, icons only, text only. Current icons with
less white space arround would be nice (no need for small icons, IMHO the
problem is the fill areas arround).
    - Related: all apps should have the preferences menu entry in the same
place. Extension: a standar menu map is needed.
    - Related: preferences window (or any window) should use tabs only if it
has few tabs (all can be seen at the same time).

Reasons:
    - Monitor space is finite, the best use it has, the more things we can
have at the same time. Other systems have demostrated that Gnome is wasting
space (IMHO Unix always liked big monitors and lot of video RAM due this).
    - Some people like one thing, but not the other thing. It is a GUI, but
nobody says that GUI must have icons always.
    - The menus are a real mess. Preferences and help are two examples of
how can a GUI diverge to painful limits.
    - "Scrolling" tabs is a pain, things seem to be missing, is not the most
intuitive thing. A tree in the left, when there is a lot of pages, is a lot
better, and allows a logical organization, with parents and childs (and is
more expandable in the future).

Examples:
GTimeTracker (IIRC, I am away from Unix machines now) has the option for
text only in bars, as some other apps, but the rest does not. GMC does not
(I use MC most of times, less space and more visible functions).

Menu standarization is a good thing. I am not saying that every app must
have a Foo menu with Bar option. But two apps have the same function in
different places and sometimes with different names. Argh!

Some apps only have have two or three tabs, and look OK, but others have 5
or more and need scrolling. Bad.

Personal rant (PS?):
I have being reading some MacOS docs (I am not proposing to follow them) and
I realized they not given exact examples ("if your app does this you must
put this here" but "look this two examples, one is wrong the other is right,
because this and this") but a good set of rules, that everyone follows and
then MacOS look & feel is logical (maybe not good, but at least does not
changes from app to app like a mad monkey).

I hope this is the objetive of this GUI effort, a guide so Gnome apps look
like Gnome apps (and nice and useful), not just because it says Gnome Foo in
the About window.

GSR
 
PS (real ;] ): We should move this to gnome-gui-list.