[Bf-funboard] Buttons organisation guidelines

[Matt Ebb]

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

Not on a technical level. As far as I know, it'll take a lot of work to get
that working  - too much to have done by the 2.3 release. Of course work on
the UI doesn't stop with version 2.3, but we can at least get most of the
structure in place now so further changes won't be so disorienting.

> 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.

Yeah, that specific example is an exception (and if there is no good reason
why you can't delete in editmode, that feature should be un-broken rather
than working around it in the UI). But anyway, let me repeat: I'm talking
about general guidelines. Exceptions like that can be taken care of on a
case-by-case basis.

> 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.

Well those sorts of things are kind of mixed. I also said just a few lines
above that:
"When it's not possible to cleanly separate buttons into different panels,
we can at least try to group things that way within the panel"
I'm trying to think of some rules for grouping things together, rather than
just putting them in randomly.

i.e. Looking at William's mockup i.e. "why is the 'Weight:' grouped with
'Assign' and 'Remove' and how can we create rules for this grouping to apply
consistently throughout all the panels? The aim is for consistency and
structure. Even if it's not immediately apparent, people get used to these
sorts of things, and it helps to build familiarity and makes the system more
predictable if people find things where they expect them to be. If we don't
have consistent rules for where things get placed, it just becomes like the
current buttons windows where people have to hunt all over the screen to try
and find a button (that may not even be there) that they're looking for.

The idea of separating 'tools' and 'settings' is one I came up with, that
seems like a relatively logical distinction to make. If you have a proposal,
please air it, but we need at least some sort of structure to this (which is
more specific than just putting related things together) to order things
consistently and efficiently.

Matt