[Bf-funboard] Buttons organisation guidelines

[Matt Ebb]

> Well, what if a tool and a setting is related (they often are)?
> This means that when you wold want do change the Edge
> Settings, you would have to first reach out in one area to
> anable edges, and then, in a completely different area to alter
> the settings. This would make things much more confusing
> than the current setup in 2.28. You wouldn't know which
> settings related to wich actions, and even if it said so in the
> tooltip, it would be confusing. Actions and settings that are
> related to each other should be next to each other.

I don't understand - what do you mean by Edge Settings / enable edges? What
buttons are you referring to? Maybe the word 'setting' was a bad choice of
mine.

In any case, perhaps I need to clarify - I'm not talking about the types of
buttons (as in the button styles thread in the forums), I'm talking about
the functionality. 'Settings' as being more global stuff that affects the
obData, and tools being more specifc stuff that affects selections,
sub-objects like verts, faces, edges etc. For example even though the the
'Limit: 0.001' button in editbuttons is 'setting a value', it's operates
destructively on vertices, and as such belongs with the tools (remove
doubles).

You are already basically using this idea in your mockup here:
http://www.shadeless.dk/editbuttons2.jpg
Display: Settings
Vertex Groups: Settings
Material Groups: Settings
Modeling: Tools
Object Settings: Settings
Other: Mainly settings, but I'd consider flip/recalc normals and the
centering stuff to be 'tools'.

Of course I agree that related buttons should be with each other - your own
mockup proves that these are not mutually exclusive concepts. However we
should be also paying attention with a larger scope and design otherwise
we'll just end up like the current layout again soon enough, where related
buttons are sort of together, but they're scattered all over the window.

Cheers

Matt