Screen Space Wasted by GUI’s Revisited
This topic presents itself to me every few times I use a computer. Why do so many GUI’s waste screen space? Sure, there are instances where you’d want to cleverly space everything out for legibility, or to better define what commands go with what controls, but many GUI’s take this to the extreme. Here are some considerations when deciding if a GUI is taking up too much space:
1. Do the controls already exist somewhere else on the page? If so, consider why you need two sets of controls for the same thing. For example, Gmail has two sets of controls, one at the top and one at the bottom of the mail list. Is this truly necessary?
2. If there are GUI considerations being made, why not allow users to make some GUI decisions themselves? If I’m an expert user and I want to cram all the controls into the corner, and there’s nothing preventing me from doing so, why not make it an option? It’s not going to hurt me, and anyone else can just leave it off and use it the regular way. In the gmail example, I should be able to hide the controls I’m not using — not just with the sidebar widgets that expand and collapse, but with the rest of the screen’s controls.