Comment by breakwaterlabs
16 hours ago
> they are trying to maximize screen space.
Ironic to say on hackernews which shows massive whitespace in the margins-- and if I try to widen my tab sidebar it actually indents the margin rather than eating into it.
One can look across the computing space as a whole and see that, it is surely not the case that we're "maximizing screen space".
It should have said maximizing screen height, not space (on desktop not mobile), in these modern days of widescreen monitors. If we have title bars, menu bars, toolbars etc, while using the full screen width, we're peering through a letterbox. (Fixed headers on websites contribute too.) Line length needs to be kept shorter for readability, leading to wasted space at the sides.
Perhaps, if you're not using a sidebar for bookmarks or vertical tabs or whatever, it suggests something ought to have changed in UI design back when widescreen monitors became the norm?
You think Hacker News’ design is new? It’s looked exactly the same since I started using it over a decade ago.
Totally agree. But this does not take away from his point that maximizing screen space is the motivation in Firefox. In fact, all you have done is demonstrate why they are driven to do so.
Maximized screen space doesn't really benefit this site.
The key element missing from this thread is that the Internet going from a text based to a multi-media (and increasingly video-centric) experience.
A lot of Internet users, at this point, do as much reading on their phone or laptop as I do reading on my TV (almost none).