mockups, numberfields, new tabs Re: [Bf-funboard] colours for different button types?

[Luke Wenke]

Hi,
You can read my original message here:
http://www.blender.org/pipermail/bf-funboard/2003-October/001007.html
This expands on it....

Here I've shown what it would look like if the colours were consistently
applied, and tuhopuu-inspired tabs
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~wenke/blender/coloured-buttons.png

Maybe my colour scheme isn't so good, but it looks like it is too
distracting to have a different colour for the different button types. Using
colours in a limited way, just for toggle and action(?) buttons seems to
work pretty well though. I even made the 3D window buttons have the new
colour scheme depending on what type of button they are. I made the dropdown
lists the default colour (grey) since they're not one of the coloured button
types. I've joined the rotation/scaling centre point buttons in the 3D
window to show that they work like a group of radio buttons. I've made the
tabs look like tabs.
For information about the importance of tabs that look like tabs see:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000060.html
"When Microsoft first usability tested the tabbed dialog interface,
usability went up from about 30% (the old Mac way) to 100%. Literally every
single testee was able to figure out the tabbed dialogs."
(The old way involves tab kind of things that look like ordinary icons)
Perhaps an improvement on my tab modification would be make the other tabs
look more like they're "behind" the active tab. (maybe they could be darker,
etc)

About the numberfields....
Maybe they could have "spinners" on the right-side.... that way it would be
obvious that it is for variable numbers (that it's not a number written in a
text-field or an action or toggle button).
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~wenke/blender/numInputs-3dsmax.gif
Basically you click to edit the number (to be consistent with the
text-fields - rather than make it shift-click to edit) and click on the up
or down increment to increase or decrease the number. Or click and drag on
the spinner (up/down arrow icons) to quickly increase or decrease the number
by medium or large amounts. Maybe in the textfields and numberfields either
the title or maybe the value could be a different colour so you can see that
it is the changeable part.

- Luke.