Ran v4 side by side to see what the difference actually was, and it was
not spacing. v4 fills the window edge to edge and divides its zones with
hairlines; v5 floated rounded, shadowed cards on a visible page
background. One reads as an editing suite, the other as a dashboard.
So panel gains a second variant. "default" is still a card, for something
that floats -- inside a window, on a page. "zone" is a region of the app:
square, no shadow, no border of its own, divided from its neighbours by
the one hairline everything else uses. The workspace keeps no gutter
between regions; the preview zone is flush, because padding around a
picture is a frame nobody asked for, and its surround is letterbox black
rather than a panel colour.
The right column was two stacked panels with two heads for one thing.
It is one zone now.
And the surfaces have depth, derived from each theme's own elevation
scale so neither needs a rule of its own: a vertical fall on every band
and every raised control, the accent gradient and a bloom under a primary
button, a wash off the top-right of the page, tokenised thin scrollbars,
an accent mark on every zone title, and v4's film grain -- overlay at
3.5% on dark, multiply at 1.5% on light, and painted with no z-index so
anything that opens above the frame stays crisp.
digital-garbage
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