I agree that the right hand side is wasted space. This is where I could also find the “trending” area, which is now in a rather obscure, confusing location and I’m not even sure I’m seeing the trending things and not just whatever is new now. I really miss “trending”.
I miss seeing “notifications” spelled out and on the right. Now it’s this tiny little thing in a weird place.
I find it way uglier. I don’t particularly like recent trends in UI design and this seems to go whole hog. It’s maybe nicer on mobile but on desktop I hate it and that’s where I use mastodon.
I guess I’ll get used to it but I do keep looking for stuff I used to readily find in that now totally empty space to the right and realizing it’s nowhere or really tiny now, or way off in some obscure land maybe. I ask myself WTF? I get upset. I look around a bit and leave. It actually is discouraging. Not trying to be a Nixon. It’s actually good for me, but yeah, I don’t like it.
I miss seeing my custom banner and bigger profile pic too. I just really don’t see why it was changed this much and so much eliminated. It’s way less usable for me. Maybe just a focus on mobile with total disregard for desktop users? I really wish sites would stop doing that…