Hello, I was wondering if it would be possible to move some of the UI to maximize board space? My OCD just hates having the dead space when I play on my computer. I’ve attached a screenshot of how I’d like to see things moved around.
If the top NavBar could be a left vertical nav bar that would allow for more vertical space and a slightly larger board.
The move buttons below the board could be moved to either below or above the chat on the right.
Then I also just find the dead space between the board and chat side a little awkward, it would be nice if the right side of the board was attached to the left side of the players/chat.
It’d be rather worse if it were squished on the left by a left-bar that is “Community” wide.
This has been explored before, without messing with the top-bar … what we have is the best anyone’s been able to come up with.
It’d be a brave person to take on the task of adding the extra variable of “when to put the menu on the top and when to put it on the side”. And even “whether to do that, or whether the experience should always be the same”.
On a minor note:
ew! I’d hate for my board to be unbalancing my screen over to the right
Making it possible to be a personal preference just complicates things even more
The thing to bear in mind is that the person actually implementing this has to make a reasonable attempt at testing what happens across the infinite range of possible aspect ratios, devices, browsers (and now preferences )
A summary of what I’m saying is
I personally share the desire that this space utilisation be as optimal as possible.
Just one voice, but adding validity to the request.
I don’t see a good prospect for it improving any time soon, because I’m aware of how difficult I personally would find it to do.
… and just sometimes, when I say something is too hard, it triggers someone to say “nonsense, here I’ve done it”, which would be awesome
Assuming I understood correctly, the opinion is the move the game navigation (arrows) to the right section. I also agree with this as I feel the board should be as big as possible. I put my game into zen mode and F11 to play sometimes hehe. But having less steps for other would be nice.
For mobile, you could duplicate the navigation and have one visible and one hidden depending on screen size? That’s the first idea I would try.
Side note: can zen mode automatically fullscreen? Or is that a bad idea?
Screenshot 2025-05-26 at 6.11.42 pm (2)
Screenshot 2025-05-26 at 6.11.42 pm (2)1920×1285 288 KB
It’d be rather worse if it were squished on the left by a left-bar that is “Community” wide.
I don’t think many people are playing on a 3:2 ratio. 16:9 is likely the norm and so my screenshot is more representative to how most people see the site and the UI is not very well optimized for the 16:9 aspect ratio in a landscape layout. As others have pointed out the site layout on mobile is fine in portrait.
ew! I’d hate for my board to be unbalancing my screen over to the right
you say ew but in my screenshot the board is “unbalancing” my screen by hanging out on the left. my suggestion to “attach” the right of the board to the left of the “player/chat” column would also involve centering the entire group, or heck just center the board and let the player/chat column hang off to the right
Ok well I’m done working on this for now. I got things looking mostly how I would want them, had to use Stylus to edit CSS and Greasemonkey to remove the redundant “Home” text next to the OGS logo, also used a greasemonkey script to move the board controls above the chat and keep them there.
Left side buttons are still messed up that they open downwards, this includes the profile button so it hangs off the bottom of the page. Oh and the search box is messed up still obviously.
Iirc long time ago I saw a video, probably on YouTube where they had customised they’re board layout.
I know you can customise profile but I have no idea how they customised and kept it consistent. As of my knowledge even if I customize from dev tools it resets after refresh
Honestly, given the normalcy of screens which are wider than they are tall on computers, I’m surprised title bar on the left isn’t the default, at least for the desktop version of sites (title bar on the top probably still makes more sense for mobile devices which are often in portrait mode, and for RTL languages like Japanese (and maybe MSA and Hebrew? I know they’re RTL, but I’m unfamiliar with them), title bar on right would make more sense)
That’s not to say I’m bothered by the current design, and I like the board centered in the deadspace as it currently is rather than hanging off to the right as in your mock-up, but purely as regards to putting the title bar on the left, I can’t say I don’t think it would be an improvement
I don’t hate vertical! I wonder if it would look a bit cleaner to replace words w/ icons so they aren’t affecting width (hover-over can expand the menu to full words) example: mui drawer
My other question is whether this would apply to the whole site or just the game page. I play some on desktop, and personally care more about consistency than maximizing vertical space.
I also don’t like that the board is so “far” on the left, but instead of increasing the empty space on the left, I’d move something from the right to the left. Chat, player cards, move tree… I think there’s some potential to rebalance and reduce the need to scroll things on the right.
Because when on top the height (space taken from body of page) is fixed at 1 line, but when on left the width taken from body of page is the max length of all items which might be more than you’d like (consider translations too). It also works better with the sub menus popping open: if it’s a horizontal bar those are vertical and it’s a simple mouse movement up and down to choose, and the top-level remains visible. If it’s a vertical left nav then if you have vertical sub menus below you occlude the other items, losing context and introduce furstration when you pick the wrong starting item, if you have vertical offset to the right then you need an extra dog-leg mouse movement to select, and if they are horizontal items off to the right you need large mouse movements across and it’s easy to have an inadvertent vertical movement and lose the menu.
