And as someone with progressive glasses, I actually hate really wide text. That’s why it took me a while to find that slider everyone was talking about – my window was too narrow to support it, because I had made the window a “comfortable” width for me. I’m really surprised to learn that so many people have their window covering the whole screen.
I am also visually oriented. I think the difference is that I like clutter. I find it welcoming and friendly. I mean, I want to be able to find my stuff, but “the big cohesive rectangle in front” is visually distinctive to me.
I accidentally switched to the new theme on Reddit, and that has the same huge gaps that this forum (or theme) has. The issue isn’t a “waste of space”. (I’m reading this on a desktop screen, so it’s pretty big.) However it’s not a good aesthetic, IMO.
I never saw t his slider. I still don’t. I would like such a slider, if possible, as I’d like it to be wider. (Right now I’m seeing the right scroll bar, but there’s too much “white space” around it.)
Is there a box at the bottom-right of your screen that says 48/48 or something similar? Click on it to get your slider. (How it looks varies from device to device.)
Click on your avatar in the upper-right. Click on the bell. Choose Preferences from the top bar (or change the first box to that), choose Interface from the side bar (or change the second box to that).
We might not be talking about the same thing. I see a slider on the right of the page (currently 54/55), but that lets me scroll up and down. It doesn’t make the page wider.
I was referring to the slider that navigates up and down in the thread. Or “scroll bar”. I didn’t see it at first, because I had my window narrow enough that Discourse hid it to give more room to the text. I change the width of my window in the usual way, grabbing a corner of it with a mouse (or touch pad, actually.) I don’t LIKE really wide windows. So I was confused that everyone was complaining about white space and talking about this awesome slider that promptly navigated to where-ever you wanted to be in the thread.
When I dragged my window wider, I found the slider. When I made it crazy-wide I saw the white space that bothers so many.
Sorry for any confusion.
As you might gather from my story, Discourse actually wants to use a little more horizontal space than I want to give it. I have no problem with horizontal white space.