[Bf-funboard] New Logical Renderbuttons Layout

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 11:41:19AM +0200, William Reynish wrote:
> Due to a few drawbacks of my RenderButtons mock-up on the Blender 
> Funboard ealier, I have updated and changed it a bit. Here it is:
>  
> http://www.shadeless.dk/renderbuttons.gif

Organizing into groups / buttonpanels is good for allowing vertical 
layouts besides horizontal. The lables should help to make sense 
of all that controls. And collapsing panels is an interesting new 
possibility.

But anyway, although I think you have done a good job, the 
screenshot from Roel is much easier on my eyes and I'm sure 
I coud work much faster with it.

http://roelspruit.com/var/code/renderwindow3.PNG


There's something going wrong with the button borders, all those 
gradients, and the lack of color / the dark colors.

I think people should keep in mind, that it's not about creating 
'good' looking screenshots to be put on the walls of your 
livingroom. It's not about looking cool with some kind of industrial 
endtime style.
It's all about efficiency, readability and so on. That doesn't mean 
it must be ugly: one can find great beauty in functional pure 
designs.

I'm also not saying that we must stick with current button-style 
and colors. But don't replace it with something worse.
(Peole should know I'm all for trying new stuff ...)

  
> All the buttons have been organised into groups. In this case, 
> there are 6 groups; Save, Options, Render, Other, Format and 
> Presets. This makes it much easier for the user to make sence of
> the 
> buttons. It is now clear that Quality has to do with saving, and 
> that Width and Height has to do with the frame size.
> The idea is the you can collapse the groups (especially useful 
> while in Vertical mode)so that you can concentrate on certain 
> aspects and make more room for what you are concentrating on.

On collapsing panels (/groups):
It' not especialy, but only useful in vertical mode.

Any ideas how to handle collapsing sideways for horizontal 
arangements? The problem is, there will be no space for the label 
(other than showing it vertical (hard to read)).

> I have also changed the names of some buttons. Here is the list 
> of changes:
> Odd > Upper
> X > Time difference
> OSA > Anti-aliasing
> Play > Play Movie

I like the renaming. Easier to understand.

> ...
> I have made a new Level numberbutton for Motionblur so that you 
> can chose the Motionblur level independantly from Anti-aliasing. 

I think numberbuttons are no good for just a small number of 
discrete values. Should be option-buttons or popus-menu (listbox).


> You will notice that the Anti-aliasing, Panorama, Edge, Motionblur 
> and Fields buttons are animated to show how it will look when 
> they are depressed. The settings for each button should only be 
> active when it is depressed, so that it is clear to the user that 
> the settings are relevant to the button it belongs to.

Please never ever again use such an animation. I had to turn on 
animations in my browser only to quickly disable them again. 
I can't think about the design while it's blinking. Drives 
me crazy (and I'm sure, I'm not alone).


> My proposal is also to make it possible to edit Numberbuttons by 
> just leftclicking on them. You could always click the arrows to 
> move the number up or down.

Click-dragging is to nice to drop it. But the buttons could (and I 
say should) work like this:
- mouse-button-down, drag -> change value according to movement.
Ends on mouse-button-up.
- mouse-button-down, no or minimal movement, mouse-button-up
-> show cursor, allow editing