radio/toggle buttons Re: [Bf-funboard] Large Texture buttons redesign proposal

[Luke Wenke]

> Why does everyone absolutely want to eliminate directly accessible
> and straightforward UI elements?

The thing is that currently it isn't very straight-forward... it isn't clear
at first glance for some of the render buttons (e.g. sky/premul/key and
shadow/envmap/pano/radio) whether they're radio buttons or ordinary toggle
buttons.

> ....I'm really the wrong person to complain about all this, because I
maintain
> my own tree with the old UI anyway,
:)

> but I just want to 'save' Blender
> users from a usability nightmare.

Well the kind of thing I am talking about is already in the file format
droplist (jpeg, avi, targa, etc) and users have seemed to cope with that ok.
I know it usually takes two clicks, but you can actually do it in one as
well (well one click to open the droplist, then a release). And if
mousewheel support for the droplist was added you could hover the mouse over
the droplist and use the mousewheel to quickly (popup the droplist and)
change the selection. [BTW, I think the mousewheel, shift+mousewheel and
ctrl+mousewheel should also be used in numberfields/sliders] And if it
automatically popped up on hover (as proposed) then it would take 1 click
for everyone.
Some advantages of droplists -
- the initial target area can be larger, and the droplist width can be
larger than the initial target area so the second target area can be even
larger... (though there are two target areas for the user to find)
- drop lists can have nice headings (e.g. "Save image as")
- drop lists show only the current settings and hide the rest, making it
easier for the user to quickly see what all their settings are. On the other
hand experienced users would memorize radio button positions and quickly be
able to see the settings (via colours of the buttons) without even reading
much of the text.... in that regard (and also with regard to selecting
items) regular radio buttons seem better for experienced users...

> It's not like we work with 320x200
> displays and that we need to save every single pixel by using complex
> UI elements that magically pop up.

Well when people start having 4 3D views at once plus other windows (IPO's,
buttons windows...) things start to get more crowded anyway... for small
lists of options droplists wouldn't really save much space anyway... I had
suggested it as a way to solve the problem of making radio buttons look
distinct to toggle buttons...

- Luke.