Information density in the new theme

[seancolsen]

We discussed this in a team meeting recently and @ghislaineguerin said she would work on it for the upcoming release. During today's meeting @zackkrida suggested I open a ticket to track it.

@ghislaineguerin's styling work in #4380 comes with an overall reduction in information density. Personally I find this to be a step backwards. I think lower information density is appropriate for content-based sites. But (in my opinion) a data-centric application like Mathesar warrants a relatively high information density. I want to be able to see a lot of stuff at once without scrolling or zooming out.

I've included some specific examples below, but the problem is far-reaching. It applies to UI all over the app. These examples give a pixel-for-pixel comparison of Mathesar in 0.2.3 vs Mathesar in the current develop branch. The font sizes are the same in "before" vs "after". What's different is all the spacing around the text.

Table list in nav menu breadcrumb selector

Pagination

Pagination

Cell context menu

[kgodey]

+1 to this, information density is important for Mathesar.

[seancolsen]

Here is another new aspect of this design which that has a small impact on information density:

I'll call this the "panel spacing".

I do think the panel spacing looks nice! But it means I can't see as much of my data. Was there a specific problem with the old design that the new panel spacing intends to solve?

It's small, but it just kind of irks me.

In this view too...

These space on the sides isn't doing anything for me. I've seen in user testing that horizontal scrolling can be inconvenient. And we've heard from users that it's somewhat common to have tables with a lot of columns. So I'd rather optimize for that. I'd rather the sheet take up the full width of the viewport.