Re: [Usability] Gome is Too BIG..

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Thu, 2008-03-13 at 09:17 +0000, Dokuro wrote:
> hello everyone,
> it has been a while now and it seems that Gnome has everything over
> sized buttons, spaces, fonts, i can't put mi finger on it but on a
> 800x600 screen everything is always so big... i reduced the font size
> from 10 to 8, it fixed things a little but almost all programs occupy
> the hole screen without being maxed, seems to be a regular problem in
> gnome applications where the windows can't be too small, could this be
> part of the HIG specifications or some ppl making bad interfaces...(i
> would not know since i have not read it...)

This has come up quite a lot recently.  Two of the problems are:

- AFAIK, the gtk toolkit requires developers to specify most things in
pixel sizes, rather than in some resolution-independent unit.  This
results in interfaces that don't scale too well.

- Because of this, the HIG pretty much had to be written from the point
of view of designing for user who were running with average sized fonts
on an average sized screen.  This results in interfaces that don't scale
too well.

When we get around to writing the all-new HIG, we definitely need to be
more mindful of smaller screens and mobile devices.  How much of that
can be done in the HIG itself, and how much in a 'HIG for Mobile
Devices', remains to be seen.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems