[Bf-funboard] Buttons organisation guidelines

Luke Wenke bf-funboard@blender.org
Wed, 15 Oct 2003 22:28:06 +1000


> Yep, greying out is good - it is out of the scope for 2.3 though.
http://www.blender.org/docs/UI/ui_redesign2.html
"For this project we will stick however to the more graphical and visible
side of the UI, as laid out in the sections below."
"We also have to investigate further drawing styles of the 3d objects
themselves."

It seems to me that greying out buttons is in fact part of the scope...

> What I'm talking about here is not when to show buttons or not, but how to
> group them with a consistent organisational structure. These are related
but
> not the same thing. If buttons are grouped in panels according to their
> level of context, then you don't have to worry so much about buttons
> disappearing all over the place like swiss cheese - the panel itself is
> hidden (or greyed). This would be more organised and less distracting
> visually.
But as I said, some buttons like the delete material button in the edit
buttons, only work in object mode (though should also work in editmode...
and new material and the material index control both work in either mode. I
think all the material buttons should still be in one group. Though
generally, I agree that editmode-only buttons should be separated from other
buttons.

> > Even when you're out of editmode you can't see its effects [the effect
of
> > only smoothing some of the faces] (it must be a bug).
> It works for me, perhaps it's a driver issue.
It works now. I don't know what was happening before. Though there still
isn't smoothing while you're in editmode. (That would be intentional I
guess)

> > > So my initial proposal. in grouping these buttons together:
> > > 1* Try to keep panels mode-specific. i.e: don't mix buttons that are
> > > dependent on different modes
> > But in object mode, you can use the edit buttons to create and delete
new
> > materials... I think these buttons should still be right next to the
other
> > edit button material buttons.
> I don't understand what you're talking about. I'm saying that (for
example)
> the material index buttons (which operate on the ObData and are available
in
> and out of editmode) should be grouped with other settings that operate on
> the ObData and are available in and out of editmode. The New and Delete go
> along with that since they're affecting the material groups (an ObData
> 'setting') not acting like tools (subdivide etc.).
But said in the email "the buttons to assign or remove vertices to the
vertex groups are tools that act
upon the current selected verts....So under this scheme, the group
name/selector, 'New' and 'Delete' would be grouped together, while 'Select',
'Deselect', 'Weight: ', 'Assign' and 'Remove' would be grouped together".
You seem to be saying that the latter half are tools rather than settings...
if they're tools they're supposed to go on top... in a similar way, I
thought that some of the material things were tools and should therefore go
above the settings. Or maybe they're all settings.

- Luke.