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To illustrate just how utterly boneheaded #GNOME UI design has become, I present you with Geary.

  1. This is the minimum size of the window. If I make it any narrower, the email portion will disappear and the email list will expand to cover the entire area.
  2. But! You say, you can use the column dividers, to resize the individual columns, right? Nope, the GNOME/Geary people think you should not be able to resize the columns manually like you could before. No explanation, just fuck you.
  3. So. Much. Whitespace. The amount of whitespace wasted in Geary is absolutely batshit insane. This window could present the same amount of information while taking up half the screenspace and still be 100% clear and usable.
  4. Related to 3, no options to change density or other options to reduce this whitespace hellscape.

This one fucking email client takes up nearly my entire 2x 4K display. I can't believe we let these people define the 'default' Linux desktop and let them get away with it.

Allow resizable columns (#1029) · Issues · GNOME / Geary · GitLab

Hi I just updated my Geary.Devel flatpak to 40.alpha (pipelines/220887-0-gfac257a-dirty) which uses the Hdy widgets. Is it possible to allow the columns for the accounts...
GitLab
#gnome
in reply to Thom, Lord of Itanium™

TheEvilSkeleton
TheEvilSkeleton
• •
But! You say, you can use the column dividers, to resize the individual columns, right? Nope, the GNOME/Geary people think you should not be able to resize the columns manually like you could before. No explanation, just fuck you.


Not sure where you got that from, but as @tbernard said: "primary focus should be on making sure that the columns always have reasonable sizes by default (e.g. make sure the sidebar is never much wider than the widest string, proportionally scaling columns with display size), rather than giving people ways to manually fix the problem."

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/-/issues/1029#note_935331

That said, the ability to manually resize was one of the things I absolutely hated on older GNOME apps.

I struggle a lot with pointer accuracy due to fidgety hands, so I would often click (and hold) the resizable bar by accident and have it resized to an undesirable size. It was always infuriating to resize it back to the desirable size.


Allow resizable columns (#1029) · Issues · GNOME / Geary · GitLab

Hi I just updated my Geary.Devel flatpak to 40.alpha (pipelines/220887-0-gfac257a-dirty) which uses the Hdy widgets. Is it possible to allow the columns for the accounts...
GitLab
@Tobias Bernard
This entry was edited (6 months ago)
in reply to TheEvilSkeleton

Brodie Robertson
Brodie Robertson
• •
I don't think he's arguing against good defaults but it seems to me like an impossible task to set a standard size that works for every single user, best of both words is you have a good default sizing and then you have to toggle the ability to resize so that you don't accidentally change things
in reply to TheEvilSkeleton

Brodie Robertson
Brodie Robertson
• •
@TheEvilSkeleton There is a middle ground between 0 choice and emacs and a standard email client feature seems much closer to the former than the latter
@TheEvilSkeleton
in reply to Brodie Robertson

Jeff Fortin T.
Jeff Fortin T.
• •

@BrodieOnLinux @TheEvilSkeleton
*Laughs in Evolution*

But really, to be fair, half of Geary's current UI layout problems are due to being still GTK3+libhandy instead of GTK4+libadwaita, where there is the notion of formfactor breakpoints implemented better, AFAIU.

@Brodie Robertson @TheEvilSkeleton

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