Usability: compact the interface?

[RJVB]

Hi,

Most cross-platform applications look "bloated" when built/run on Mac without specific adaptation, but I find that particularly noticeable in Chromium. I can imagine that this is because the code officially supports only newer versions of the OS that will probably be used on systems with retina and other crazy-high-res screens. But among us legacy users there are probably a significant number of people whose screens are older or of "lowly" normal-resolution design.
I hate maximising windows (I didn't buy a "2-Up" screen for that!) and with the window size that worked well enough in the last official Google Chrome build (and in Firefox) most sites are cramped. There's too much vertical screen wastage in particular.

Is there an existing way to scale down the interface? Other thoughts would be to not show a tab(bar) in windows with only a single tab open (wasn't there a setting for that once?) and to use a unified tab/titlebar as exists on Linux and as Firefox also uses on Mac. Could the latter setting be made available in Chromium Legacy builds, for instance?

[Wowfunhappy]

Some history: the non-unified titlebar was added as a workaround for a bug: #4

I actually appreciate being able to see the full page title of my current tab in the title bar. I also think the title bar acts as a nice visual bridge between Chromium's flat UI and the 3D UI of Aqua, making the whole system feel more unified. However, I agree that Chromium's overall UI has gotten absurdly tall, moreso within the past year following Google's 2023 design refresh.

I wonder if the WebUI code has any simple constants for height, which could be tweaked without increasing the overall maintenance burden?

[RJVB]

I actually appreciate being able to see the full page title of my current tab in the title bar.

Normally I'd agree with you, and my FF on Linux is configured to use the normal titlebar for that reason (and to have the same access to WM functions plus the WM buttons at the same location in all windows). But that interface is still compact enough otherwise. There are settings in chrome://flags to revert changes or re-enable disabled ones; I may have succeeded in tweaking the interface on my ChromeTab back to how I want it that way. I'd have to see if that is an option here too (no matter how temporary it probably is). Issue #4 is now 3 years old, has anyone tried if its fix is still required?

[krackers]

has anyone tried if its fix is still required?

It's still required, see the last two comments on that issue. If you're comfortable building chrome, you could try investigating those two commits i mentioned at the end, but I suspect you'd need to be decently comfortable with Cocoa UI stuff to get this working.

And I suspect with the recent material v3 refresh it's going to be even more annoying. I haven't looked at how drastically the stuff is changed. Ideally it'd just be some constant for height or whatever that you could revert/patch, but maybe they redesigned that entire piece.

[RJVB]

And I suspect with the recent material v3 refresh it's going to be even more annoying. I haven't looked at how drastically the stuff is changed. Ideally it'd just be some constant for height or whatever that you could revert/patch, but maybe they redesigned that entire piece.

Actually, I just played with those 2023 design changes. I can't say I *like* the new tab bar look, but it is just a few scanlines lower. Sadly they managed to blow up the main toolbar height. As in so many controls the text is much bigger than necessary (for me) in the URL bar; *maybe* if we manage to select a different size for that the entire toolbar would slim down. The other elements don't look too big to me.

[RJVB]

This does the _opposite_ of what we want, making the URL and tab bar even taller.

That it does, and I'm almost glad that my ChromeTab has been EOL'ed because I no longer have to fear how horribly looking it will reappear after an upgrade... I tried to see what the 2023 "refresh" looks like on Linux and couldn't see any difference - and then I realised its configured to use the "system theming" (it currently says "QT" instead of GTk). Not that it looks anything like my KDE or even GTK3 apps but still, I wish we had that same option on Mac. Could look better, could be lighter/faster in use, etc.

[Wowfunhappy]

FYI: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chrome/browser/ui/layout_constants.cc

The sizes of various UI elements are defined here. They can probably be changed without breaking things.

I would recommend starting with LOCATION_BAR_HEIGHT on line 73. It's already different depending on whether the Omnibox Steady State Height flag is enabled.