I loathe applications that put controls all over the title bar.

The title bar is supposed to be a mostly empty expanse that you can grab with a mouse. Now it's littered with controls, and I can hardly bring windows to focus or move them around without accidentally searching something or confirming something.

Agreed - especially if I'm remoted into a box and not necessarily running a full-resolution screen. Bad UI design is magnified when you're at 1024x768.

I find it somewhat ironic given current GNOME that when I was choosing between GNOME 2 or KDE 3 back in the day, GNOME 2 won as bits wouldn't float off my screen...

+100 couldn't agree more. And it's not a rational decision, it's a UI trend.

With GTK you can at least drag the window by grabbing controls in the titlebar.

At least on gnome you can drag or resize a window from anywhere by holding Super.

And you can, of course, reassign that key.

Resizing takes grabbing an edge though.

Alt+drag by default, but I remap it to super in dconf.

I used to agree, then I moved to Linux (KDE specifically) and found out I could set my DE up so Super+LMB anywhere on a window moves it, and Super+RMB resizes it, it's is way more convenient, I haven't found myself using the title bar any more.

But using the title bar is what most of us are used to.

Discoverability rears its head. I don't see how moving that functionality into some obscure button combination is better than obvious behavior.

I'm not advocating for this to become the default functionality across the world for everyone, it's definitely very opt-in.

In that case you don't need discoverability for something you set up yourself.

It's also very fun to play with when using the Wobbly Windows effect, you can stretch them in different ways depending on where exactly you picked the window up from.

I have Alt-LMB for moving, but that all falls to pot when I remote into another machine -- alt-lmb moves my rdp/vnc/browser, not the one in the screen I'm connected to.

Title bars also serve to more quickly recognize where windows are. If every application fills up the title bar with different stuff, it becomes harder to “parse” where windows are on the screen. There is an inherent benefit in windows having uniform “chrome”.

It annoys me particularly when I want to move a Firefox window. I have to find that one tiny spot that still allows me to move the thing.

I was under the impression this was controllable.

As opposed to the space in the mostly unused bottom bar?

Less space on a UHD monitor (meaning these days we have enough pixels). In the 640x480 px days then it might made sense to really squeeze btn’s in…

Minimizing used space is often (usually?) at odds with good UX, so I guess the actual question is: why is minimizing vertical space even a goal there?

The 16:9 screens. Once upon a time they were called widescreens because many people were used to small (in inches) CRTs or LCDs (even with square panels.) Basically they were 12:9 and those 4 extra units on the horizontal axis become real extra space. Unfortunately most people only got 768p screens on their laptops while all TV sets had 1080p and some of the old monitors were 1024p or 1200p. So "less vertical space". And then when you have a 13" laptop you don't have much vertical space no matter the resolution.

We're talking about things like dialog windows that don't take much vertical space even when putting all confirmation buttons in separate rows; this is a set of applications that often easily fit on half the screen. I know what you're talking about, I'm writing this on a laptop with 13" screen and I'm using a browser with vertical tab bar for a reason, but this isn't that case.

Ah yes. Instead it pollutes the title bar with multiple things with wildly different behaviours with no error margin

"less vertical space" so let's have a hamburger menu on a desktop screen. Right next to the window close button.

"less vertical space" so let's have a tiny search icon right next to the select button

"less vertical space" so let's have search consistently in the left corner, no in the middle, no to the right

"less vertical space", so let's have tabs, buttons, icons, and hamburger menu in one row. There's no space for the actual title or little space to drag the window? But THERE'S LESS VERTICAL SPACE ENJOY

> "less vertical space" so let's have a hamburger menu on a desktop screen.

hamburger menu on desktop should be abolished