The size of Gimp and Photoshop button are of little consequence here other than to justify your preference, I do not use those programs on the laptop, I do (or did prior to these changes) use emoncms on my laptop when onsite and at clients.
There have been comments made on other threads about making the dashboard editing more touchscreen friendly and even Glyn’s comments were made about mobile phones not touchscreen laptops.
The fact remains that the original toolbar was usable, but was getting cramped with the new buttons coming on board, but aside from being anchored to the scrolling page rather than the viewing area, it was totally usable. The previous palette was a huge step forward and made it much easier to use with a touchscreen, but this latest move to buttons that are 25% of the size is a an even bigger step backwards in being touchscreen friendly, as it is now harder than the original toolbar for small high res touchscreen laptops.
In short, what I could do before the palette I can no longer do without scaling the screen, losing 10-25% screen area just to make the buttons usable, the palette now blocks the use of a device I could previously use no problem.
Even the Arduino IDE now has an “interface scale” in recognition of these devices and that only has a cluster of 5 buttons on a single row toolbar.
Your own comments said the 2 small buttons from the old toolbar “look lost” and Paul replied saying they should be same height and twice the width.
I agree and have not suggested that!
I suggest you do that as I can see I am in a minority and I do not want to hold back your development. I just thought there was plenty of room for compromise in that massive 75% reduction, especially when I have repeatedly suggested ways to make the toolbar smaller on the whole despite bigger buttons.
If matching other unrelated programs is more important than making emoncms more usable for a wider audience then fine, I will make my own arrangements or changes to emoncms once you’re done.
ps - I can see from your screenshot how keeping the buttons so small is just as essential to enable using a 42" 4K monitor, as space is tight