New Pencil UI is not dense enough

[jandsu]

• Operating system: Irrelevant
• Pencil version: 3.0.0-rc.1

It is certainly a matter of taste, so excuse me for this kind of bug... which is typical of a Pencil user who is by definition focused on UX :)

IMHO, the new UI looks good but is could be more efficient. If you have to design a mobile app it's fine but if you need to design a desktop UI from a desktop which does not have a 4K screen, your design does not easily fit into the screen.

In particular, I believe that

1. the top zone (burger menu and toolbars) is huge...
2. the leftmost tabs (clipart/my shapes/shapes) are not worth their size
3. all this components panel seems much bigger than in 2.0.5 (it is not actually, but there is some room for improvement).

Anyway, thanks for this very useful application!

[capi1O]

👍

I work on my laptop most of the time (11" screen), and here is how Pencil looks in full screen :

So much vertical space wasted ! It would be nice if the "top zone" (as @jandsu described it) could be trimmed (with arrow to access additional elements). I don't really like this kind of arrow (it adds another click) but I'd rather have one than so much space wasted. Another possibility would be foldable panels, I found that quite handy in many apps once we get used to it.

Pencil Version : 3.0.0-rc.1
OS : macOS 10.12

[LeadManPL]

• Operating system: Ubuntu 16.04
• Pencil version: 3.0.4
  UI is still poorly designed, and wastes a lot of space to work on.

[capi1O]

It looks good on Ubuntu 17.10 (gnome-shell 3.26, wayland), same pencil version (3.0.4), can you show some screenshots ?

[jandsu]

I would be surprised if it has anything to do with Gnome as it is based on Electron (hence Chromium under the hood).
Anyway, I tested it again and it seems to be fixed now: there are some nice rules to shrink the top zone (with the burgerr-menu etc...) when the app is shrinking....
For me, we can close this issue now... if anyone disagrees, I guess he should file another issue.

[jandsu]

BTW... tested on Ubuntu 16.04 & Pencil 3.0.4