[Wowfunhappy]

> The new icon is scheduled to launch in Chrome 117, which releases in early September 2023, as part of a general design refresh for desktop platforms.

I downloaded Chrome Canary to take a look at this "general design refresh" and... sigh.

The new browser UI is now 10 pixels taller than the old one.

I realize 10 pixels isn't a lot. But it's also not noting—it's half the height of the top bar on Hacker News. And this is after Google already made their UI much taller in their last refresh. If you make the UI take up more and more space with each redesign, it adds up.

Yes, I have a bigger monitor today than I once did. But I bought that monitor so I'd have more space for actual content, not the browser UI.

Remember how Google chose the name "Google Chrome" because it was designed to have a minimal UI that gets out of your way and lets you focus on page content?

[World177]

I created a comparison. [1]

[1] https://i.imgur.com/cuCcyf1.png

[herpderperator]

From the article:

> We think the tune icon [...] is more obviously clickable.

Yeah, because they made two changes and made it look like a button by modifying the surrounding area as well as changing the icon itself. The lock icon would also be more obviously clickable if it had the same changes in its surrounding area. How ridiculous of a comparison to make while changing two things.

[Dalewyn]

I am amazed at how the UI is larger but the actually important information (the bloody URL) is smaller.

What in the actual fuck.

[anon3242]

It is not just about pixels... The line-height of the text in the address bar simply feels wrong to me. We now have more spaces but smaller, harder to see text. Feels like going backwards for me. Reminds me of the new Steam download UI, the elements are larger while the download speed is much harder to discrern. I rememember lying on bed checking on the game download speed in my high school years, now I have to get real close to see the current speed.

The rest of the "refresh" actually seems not unacceptably bad.

Some 'designers' just blatantly waste advanced technology and screen real estate. Like I finally built a PC that can open right-click menus in an instant wihout having to watch the spinner, and then windows 11 decided that having (unskippable!) transitions to open menus is a good idea. I went out of my way to make sure I have the lowest-latency mouse and monitor, and websites use these custom css scrollbars that have nearly 2 frames of more latency that the system one, also dragging windows in and out of Stage Manager make your mouse have massive latency for a while.

I am at least happy with macOS though, at least the line-height is not going wild. Seems Apple have some of their soul left, though they may be lost soon. Even just being a novice macOS user I can immediately tell whether any animation is done pre or post 2020.

[Dalewyn]

It's been the trend for the past decade or so to use as little of the available rendering power as possible.

32-bit color? Naw, we're going two tone: Black and white.

8k screen resolution? Naw, we can't waste precious screen real estate on such frivolous things like borders and shading.

240Hz screens? Naw, we can't waste precious processor cycles and power on frivolous animations.

As for fonts, I get the impression that designers behind it are all in their 20s, maybe even fresh out of their late 10s. One's eyesight is usually still top notch in that age range, I know mine was; and I too dabbled in font sizes for ants because they looked cooler.

But I'm in my 30s now, and I can't stand tiny fonts anymore. My eyes aren't what they used to be, and designers by either their ignorance or naivety can't seem to respect the fact that people fucking age. I don't entirely blame them, I was that ignorant and naive bastard too once upon a time; I've grown wiser with age.

Newer/younger designers really ought to be shown how their seniors use their designs, it'll be an eye opening (pun intended) learning moment for the ones who were just naive. The ignorant ones probably can't be helped, but who knows.