[Bf-committers] Join Screens OGL Bug

[Campbell Barton]

Hi Jiri this is a massive improvement and weather its *the best* way of 
doing it or not, can be discussed - but a great improvement,
something that made the "Blender is easy to use" argument, a bit shaky 
when even experienced users had to tweak the mouse a few pixels to 
remove the right subdivision and sometimes got it wrong.

Also- Oops locations are stored per window, and if you have a complex 
manually positioned oops hierarchy, then loosing it in a mistaken join 
will loose you data with no undo since its a window action.

I don't have a problem with the arrow, at first I had to think twice 
about what to do, first time, but it was quite obvious to me.
My initial reaction was, "Wow, Blender is making my UI action obvious"

As for Matt's suggestion of blacking out all windows, it seems okay- if 
you dont like the arrow, personally Im not fussed.



- As for a totaly different solution, resizing a boarder into another 
could be a good way to join workspaces. It could be done in a way that 
the boarder snaps down to the lower boarder so the user sees that it 
merges as opposed to making the workspace really small, other visual 
hints could be added.
* This would be a single click (mabe with join confirmation if we want 
to be parranoid), and so accidental mouse clickdrags  dont loose you 
windows.
* Users would be aware of the workspace they were making bigger, from 
understanding how resize works.
* Fits basic notion that "This window is annoying me, Ill make it small 
so it goes away"
* Matches functionality of MS/Open Office - Excel/Word (people will 
probably call it intuitive), I have seen other apps that have a resizing 
split that you get rid of by resizing to 0.

- But somebody needs to code it, and Jiri is probably a busy man, so I'm 
happy with whats there for now.

Cam



> I'm not sure that the arrow makes things more intuitive.  All we need 
> is something that is intuitive after the first time someone uses it -- 
> the arrow looks gaudy and a tad unprofessional to me.
>
> How does this implementation sound?
>
> Click on the screen area edge to join to bring up the split/join menu 
> -- same as currently.  Then, darken all screen regions (dynamically) 
> except the one where the mouse pointer is located.  If I wanted the 
> left region, I'd click anywhere inside it; if I wanted the right 
> region, I'd click there instead.
>
> No animation is necessary.  The required click accuracy is so low 
> (generally the regions will be hundreds of pixels high and wide) that 
> the user shouldn't need any kind of visual confirmation of what's 
> happening.
>
> The cost of an "extra mouse click" is far lower than being stunned and 
> frustrated for a few seconds when you accidentally bring up the 
> split/join menu from the wrong side of the window edge.  You'd then 
> spend a few more clicks and keypresses trying to get the screen region 
> the way you want it.  To me this is a common problem and is very 
> frustrating.
>
> Matt
>
> On Sep 22, 2005, at 15:20 PM, Jakub Steiner wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 2005-09-22 at 20:25 +0200, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> It's an interesting method, and nice gfx, but I really doubt this is
>>> what we need... for example the graphic appears counter-intuitive on
>>> the "wrong" side. The extra click also is a minus point.
>>>
>>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I just tested this and it works rather nicely. Unlike the previous
>> behavior where the user gets absolutely no visual feedback on what is
>> going to happen, this is a step in the right direction. Additionally I
>> suggest the merge happened fluently, using a short animation (say 0.5s).
>> That way you get a better idea what view you're getting. A nanosecond
>> blit has you wondering if that's really the view you wanted.
>>
>> Overlaying a close button on the focused frame window may be a more
>> elegant solution, but I don't consider the arrow counter-intuitive
>> myself.
>>
>> But I have a funny incident about window behavior. It didn't happen once
>> that I have subconsciously used the window manager close shortcut when
>> trying to close the floating 'N' blender window. If more
>> window-manager-like functionality gets added, maybe the confirmation
>> dialog should be brought up in cases like these.
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> --Jakub Steiner <jimmac at novell.com>
>> Novell, Inc.
>>
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>
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-- 
Campbell J Barton

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