Minimize / Restore / Close button is on unnatural position.

Copper Contributor

sd.pngThis is Edge Insider's position.

 

gf.pngThis is Chrome's position.

 

Edge Insider's position is unnaturally climbed up.

14 Replies

@HiSky  Good catch.  It is subtle, but the buttons are not centered vertically in the allotted horizontal bar in Edge Chromium.  In addition to the comparison to Chrome, these are the comparisons to Edge (Classic) and Firefox:

 

Min-Win-Close Buttons.jpg

 

I don't know it the difference is intentional, but it seems to me that vertical centering would be preferable to the offset.

@HiSky 

 

Edge insider Canary

Annotation 2019-09-15 171953.png

 

Google Chrome CanaryAnnotation 2019-09-15 172140.png

 

 

 

In Edge, the buttons look like they need to be moved a little downwards but that's only when you compare it to the Google Chrome.

neither of the browsers have their buttons at the center, neither vertically nor horizontally. their buttons are way too close to the top. 

Here is an interesting finding of my own that the buttons are close to File Explorer ones

 

Edge CEdge C

 

Windows ExplorerWindows Explorer

 

PS: Yes I know my image subtitle for File Explorer is Windows Explorer

@HiSky    I think that I figured out what is going on.

 

First, a refinement of the screenshot used in an earlier comment, this time showing horizontal block in which the Minimize/Windowed/Close buttons are located, with the bottom of the block underlined in red and the center line shown in blue:

 

Centerline-1.jpg

 

Second, a screenshot of the Minimize/Windowed/Close buttons in Edge Chromium shown in relationship to the tab bar, immediately to the left of the buttons, again showing the bottom of the block in red and the center line in blue:

 

Centerline-2.jpg

 

And finally, a screenshot comparing Edge Chromium Dev Version 78.0.268.3 and Linux Chromium Version 76.0.3809.100 (Ubuntu Official Build):

 

Centerline-3.jpg

 

Note the difference between Edge Chromium and Linux Chromium.   Linux Chromium uses two horizontal blocks, one for the Minimize/Windowed/Close buttons and another for the tabs.  Edge Chromium (and also, I believe based on your screenshots, Google Chrome) for Windows compresses the two blocks into one in order to conform to Windows 10 design protocols, splitting the block between the two functions, right and left. 

 

For whatever reason (probably inattentive coding), the Minimize/Windowed/Close buttons do not center vertically in the portion of the horizontal block assigned to them in either Google Chrome or Edge Chromium.  The issue also appears in other Chromium-based Windows browsers (e.g. Brave) that compress the tab block and the Minimize/Windowed/Close buttons into a single horizontal block.

 

It seems to me that Microsoft should treat this as a bug and fix it.

 

I think I see what you're saying. Those three buttons on the top right side of Edge should be a drop lower or centered to scale in the middle between the top and bottom of the bar. I compared it side by side vs Chromium and against my Windows 10 task bar (I keep my task bar on top of the screen due to running Open Shell/Classic Shell):

 

Edge Canary vs Chromium :

Capture.JPG

 

Edge Against Task bar:

2.JPG

 

Chromium Against Task bar:

3.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

@HiSky   For what it is worth, I found one version of Chromium for Linux (a build for Fedora) that seems to have worked out a way to get the vertical alignment correct:

 

Centerline-5.jpg

 

Let's hope that Microsoft will do the same in Edge Chromium.  The misalignment is a rookie design/coding mistake, and I'm surprised that it hasn't already been corrected somewhere along the line by The Chromium Project or Google.   Google Chrome moved from two blocks to a single split block in 2015 or 2016 at the latest, based on screenshots I've found of Chrome in various iterations.

@tomscharbach Fedora project... I forgot about that. I run mine from the Chromium site with a third party auto updated tied into a task scheduler to update three or four times a day. I'll have to try out the other modified built of Chromium too. https://chromium.woolyss.com/

 

Come to think of it, I think I'll go into Windows Sandbox and see how the icons look in Opera which is also built off of Chromium.

 

You already did Firefox so that base is covered. 

Opera' is centered (although their three icons are larger though):

 

Capture.JPG

 

@Anthony   The current stable build of Chromium for Windows is offset, but only slightly so:

 

Centerline-6.jpg

 

The offset is much less than the offset in Edge Chromium, though, which makes me wonder.

 

Oh well, enough time wasted in nerd heaven for one day.  

 

@tomscharbach Yeah the offset in Chromium isn't that bad, almost not noticeable. My above picture was from Chromium v. 79.0.3914.0 (Build 696689). Edge just needs a minor adjustment of centering.  

 

I don't know how accurate this is, but when I run Edge Canary (78.0.276.0) through the whatversion.net/chrome site and the other Chromium site I listed about it comes up as actually being 78.0.3904.0. Which puts Edge Canary on the level of Chrome Dev in version comparison.

 

Capture.JPG

 

https://www.whatversion.net/chrome/

https://omahaproxy.appspot.com/

@Anthony   We can see how this issue developed by looking at Chromium screenshots over the years.

 

Generalizing the design iterations into three rough periods of Chromium development, I found this:

 

Centerline-7.jpg

 

It looks like the tabs are located in a container within a header container (or perhaps layers -- I haven't looked at the source code), with the height of the header container/layer and the offset of the Minimize/Windowed/Close buttons from the top of the header container/layer changing over time.

 

The current iteration of Edge Chromium seems to have eliminated the margin between the tab container/layer and the header container/layer altogether but not adjusted the offset.

 

I think that you are right about what needs to be done -- a minor adjustment in offset.  It should be simple enough (again, I haven't looked at the source code so it might be more complicated than it seems) so I hope that Microsoft will attend to making the change before release, as some other Chromium builds have done.  It looks amateurish as it now is.

@tomscharbach Agreed. Hopefully they'll fix it. It's not the end of the world if they don't, but at the same time it'll look better and natural (professional) if they correct the issue. Good points about the Chromium comparisons going back to the Windows XP days.

I found a bug that makes this behavior worse (edge 80 stable):

1. fullscreen edge

2. Use windows Key + Left arrow to snap the window to the left of the screen

3. the entire padding of the buttons is gone

 

exampleedge.png

@HiSky 

This problem is fixed now in the latest canary update version 85.0.543.0:

The size of buttons is now same as standard UWP Windows 10 apps and other Chromium browsers.The size of buttons is now same as standard UWP Windows 10 apps and other Chromium browsers.