unity-design team mailing list archive

[Thibaut Brandscheid <randaltor@xxxxxx>]

2011/10/17 Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>
> What would help here is for someone to make a screenshot comparison of
> the same windows, laid out in exactly the same positions, on Ubuntu,
> Windows, and OS X.
>
> ....
>
> We might find that the problem is partly font size, but partly also
> size and padding of interface controls.
>

 Here are two similar images showing the file browser and text editor in
Windows 7 and Ubuntu Oneiric.

   - Ubuntu <http://image-upload.de/image/KUAqjL/28a9103bae.png>
   - Windows 7 <http://image-upload.de/image/uyfCCE/e1bc89e7fa.png>

Padding (buttons) and font size are smaller and therefore the interface
looks & feels cleaner in Windows 7. Thats the reason why smaller windows
seems to be more useful in Windows than in Ubuntu (compared same sized
windows).

Traditionally GNOME has a lot of padding (negative example → Totem controls)
and wasts a lot of screen space (has been reduced a bit last cycles).

So what to do?

   - Analise every default application UI if they need that big buttons and
   that much padding/margin
      - use the same padding/margin in every application if possible
      - Reduce padding and font size - just a bit → huge difference


Kind regards
Thibaut

PS: If anybody uses Ubuntu, Win & and Mac and could make more comparison
screenshots it would be awesome.
I use Windows only for gaming → my Wintendoo ;)