Regression: URL bar too tall; font too large

artem

This may seem silly, but after getting used to the slim, streamline URL bar, it seems like a regression for it to be twice as tall. After using Orion on iOS for almost a year, every time I go back to Safari, the URL bar feels outdated and unnecessarily bulky. Now this UI decision has made its way to Orion and that makes me sad. I value my screen real estate.

P.S. I noticed the URL bar grew last patch and it made me a bit sad.

I am aware the devs are trying to support dynamic font sizes, but can we find a way to achieve this while keeping it consistent with the original app design? Is it not possible to scale the URL element with dynamic font size? Alternatively, I would appreciate an option to keep the legacy design.

1.3.14 (6)

fish

Yes I think screen space is very important on mobile compared to PC because there is limited area on phone screens UI adjustments should be made carefully In the current version when Orion hides the toolbar the height used to display the address bar is even slightly higher than Safari

artem

As of 1.3.14 (8), this is by far the largest font of any app on my phone. I feel like I accidentally turned on some accessibility feature.

For reference, here is 1.3.13:

I don’t have a large phone, so these size increases (both URL bar and font) are very noticeable and detract from the usability.

Michal

At the moment the iOS app does not support dynamic font sizes, if it does it's mostly by accident or it only works for smaller or bigger fonts.

In 1.3.15 I will try to support it partially, maybe put a cap on the text size so at least smaller fonts would be supported, smaller fonts are less problematic.

Here's what a dynamic font looks like in 1.3.13 and that's why we put a cap on it.

artem

I noticed dynamic fonts are completely disabled, so I was hoping this was temporary. Really excited to see the proper fix and to reclaim the screen real estate. Thanks!

Michal

the smaller font is available in next TestFlight build. There is no plans to change the bar size, you may want to open a separate thread "suggestions" forum

artem

That genuinely makes me really, really sad to hear. It seems this design decision was not made intentionally, but as a stepping stone to implement another feature. I don’t understand how this is not a regression in your eyes.

Just earlier this year, @Vlad was turning down feature requests to increase the height of the URL bar, citing “preserving screen real estate” as the main reason: https://orionfeedback.org/d/7151-a-more-safari-like-design-for-iphone

Seems preserving screen real estate is suddenly not a priority. It doesn’t make me feel good as a user that you could, for example, remove grid view tomorrow because it didn’t work with the dynamic island and tell me to file a suggestion to bring it back.

artem

This was marked done, but the bug was never fully addressed — the URL bar doubled in height and stayed that way. Let’s recover some screen real estate!