Dear McNeel Devs,
I’m really digging the Rhino 9 WIP GUI so far! One thing though: the status bar is 50% taller/thicker than it was in Rhino 7. And the top menu bar also cannot be made as thin as it could in Rhino 7:
I personally much prefer the slimmer/zero pixel waste bars of Rhino 7. Maybe you tweak 9 a bit or offer an option to trim the fat here?
Best,
Anders
Is not there a setting to control how tall the tabs and the icon toolbars to be? Plus font size?
Your font seems too large compared to the size of icons.
I can see several pixels height wasted below the top icons. They serve no purpose other than taking space for no reason.
The Tab Size appearance settings does not appear to change the tab sizes of the upper toolbar (just the tabs on e.g. the layer panel). I wonder if that’s a bug or by design. But anywho, I should probably have made this a separate topic. My point was just that in Rhino 7 one can drag the upper toolbar further up than in Rhino 9 (i.e. making it slimmer). But in either case there is still wasted pixels, especially in Rhino 7 with the small icons (i.e. as you noted). I suppose that the toolbar height ought dynamically resize to whatever the icon size is (with minimal wasted pixels), which it currently doesn’t/is kinda wonky:
Either way, trimming any wasted pixels in the V9 GUI would be much appreciated 
I totally forgot, but this toolbar dragging/chunk issue might be because the border around the toolbars/panels in Rhino 8/9 is much thicker than it was in Rhino 7:
So making those thin again might resolve the toolbar chunk, at least. The status bar padding appears to be a separate issue (and intentional design decision?) though. Edit: Looks like the V8/9 border padding might be a partial culprit with the status bar chunk too (clearly visible with red frame background):
Bump..
This won’t change, since the borders are needed for panel scaling. At one point I was experimenting with this making them as thin as possible, but that makes adjusting the UI very hard.
I guess I don’t understand why this is the case. Or why so many elements in the Rhino 8/9 GUI must be wasteful with pixels (and blurry) in general. When the Rhino 7 window borders seems to scale just fine, while being both thin, crisp and easily adjustable:
This is more or less how you have set it up, correct? So same color for frame and content, and locked.
There is very little difference in border thickness with Rhino 7. In fact, in Rhino 7, you cannot get the distance between the toolbars and viewports so close as in Rhino 9.
In terms of Viewport real estate they are very close to each other.
The “Save” icon changed to lime green is a huge mistake. Now it looks very close to the “File open” icon on the left side.
The “Pan” icon is way too large in Rhino 9 WIP, hence it grabs more attention that most of the more important icons that surround it.
Also, Rhino 7’s “Print” icon was 3d-like and much more recognizable than the flat looking and difficult to distinguish “Print” icon in Rhino 9 WIP.
No I’ve been making my Rhino more and more minimal over the years (see my 7/8 comparison above). So making the status bar 50% taller makes quite a difference. As does the wider CPlane and XYZ fields:
Edits: For further context, here’s my current Rhino 9 WIP setup. Where I’m using the new Command Line Search Mode and have moved the command history window to the lower part of the right panel along with the object snaps. Again making the taller status bar more jarring (to me):
Aren’t you sometimes a bit too pixel-hungry? 
I wouldn’t say the V7 setup was a good solution, look at how close the bottoms of the letters are to the edge of the screen. One could argue about centering the text differently, but still.
I also think that what you call wasted pixels, I’d call pixels that provide some visual space, breathing room. Looking at the V7 setup, it seems to me that the bottom area is very cramped. This discussion would make more sense if we still used laptops with 1280 x 720 pixels displays, but now 1080p is the minimum, and many laptops are aiming for 1440p (that’s twice as much vertically), I’ll say even more, many laptops now have 1600p because of the 16:10 screens! So we now have at least 2x as many pixels in the vertical direction, and the status bar is 1.5x its old thickness. This is about laptop screens, but there are also monitors that are more commonly used for CAD work. Honestly, 1px distance from the bottom of monitor screen to the bottom of the letters on a 27-inch 4K monitor isn’t good spacing. I think you’re going for a look that suits you better, but I wouldn’t really call it “wasted pixels.”
You are asking for the 33% reduction of the bottom row to gain 1% for the viewports, that’s not a good deal.
IMO there were some overly thick elements in the previous iterations of the V9, but they are gone now.
Nope.. 
Edit: But being more constructive. It’s fine that you have your preferences. Now please let me have mine. I’m simply asking for a setting:
RH-91027 Statusbar height
My suggestion:
Leave the height of the Status bar like in Rhino 7, but move the letters a few pixels up to leave more space at the bottom. There are plenty of unused pixels over the letters now.
