New UI and Screen Real Estate

[Hylke Bons]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 20:51 +0900, Curt Sampson wrote:
> This is just a single data point from a single user, of course, but you
> may be interested to know that I used Pidgin for about 30 seconds before
> uninstalling it and going straight back to GAIM. Why? My buddy window
> goes from about 1/3 of my screen height to more than 2/3 of it because
> of the huge icons that Pidgin uses. I'll consider using it again when
> there's at least a "compact format" option for this sort of thing. (Feel
> free to drop me an e-mail if you ever add this.)

Gaim's icons were always much bigger.

> 
> Incidently, though this is just a matter of aesthetics rather than
> usability, I think that overall the Gaim UI design is much cleaner
> and better looking. The new Pidgin UI brings to mind the "add lots of
> distracting, shiny bits" approach of Vista, which at least for me,
> hinders usability. Then again, I'm very much a minimalist in these things.

You call 10 different styled icons for each protocol and overlayed
status icons cleaner and minimalistic? :S
(http://abdussamad.com/uploads/media/gaim.png)

Hylke

> 
> cjs