[Bf-committers] UI changes from cycles branch

[Thomas Dinges]

Hi,
I fully agree with Brechts changes and give +1 for them as Py UI Module 
Owner and member of the Interface Look team!

I would also not necessarily change the screen splitting widget, I think 
it's way better in the Cycles branch now, compared to trunk.

Removing the white arrows in menus, making them darker, helps indeed a 
lot while scanning over buttons as well.

Regards,
Thomas

Am 24.10.2011 03:29, schrieb Brecht Van Lommel:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Matt Ebb<matt at mke3.net>  wrote:
>> I'd personally like to hear the rationale for these rather than just saying
>> here's the patch. Some of it seems a bit more like a matter of taste too,
>> rather than something that's designed for a wide audience, so I'm curious to
>> hear the reasoning.
> Alright, I already discussed this with a few people, so forgot that it
> might need more explanation :)
>
>>> * Remove emboss on areas and regions
> The embossing distracts from the buttons and text in the actual
> region. There wasn't any embossing around areas (mistakenly mentioned
> that), only black lines. It's around regions only, and there it
> doesn't seem to help much, because the regions are in a different
> color from the main region anyway?
>
>>> * Remove button emboss
>>> * More subtle colors and gradients on buttons
> For me this helps a lot in making the buttons more readable. Most user
> interfaces have only sparsely distributed buttons, but in blender we
> have many buttons, and I think at a certain point embossing and
> gradients just make it harder to actually read the text in them.
>
> Buttons with more embossing make a clear distinction with e.g. the 3d
> view or timeline, but I think they just take away attention too much.
> Most user interfaces have most buttons in the same color and nearly
> the same color as the background. In Blender this is not the case, and
> adding embossing doesn't seem needed.
>
>>> * Black arrows on menu button
>>>
>> -1, Way too low contrast, there's almost no point in having them there.
>> Makes them look like other dark UI widgets like radio buttons, which is not
>> good.
> For me the arrows are quite visible but they could be made darker
> still. I think that if you look at the buttons, you see the arrows,
> but if you're scanning over buttons they can be skipped over. I think
> this is a good thing, for example in the 3d view header, there's a few
> of those in a row. The white arrows distract from the white text/icons
> and it's harder to scan for the right button.
>
>>> * Panel header changed look&  smaller
> The panel header with a single line makes it more difficult to see
> where one panel ends and the other begins, so I made the entire header
> darker. There is no longer space between the panels when they are
> collapsed, but otherwise the header has the same size. They could be
> made a bit bigger but don't feel cramped to me, maybe they would on a
> bigger screen.
>
>>> * Screen splitting widgets look
>>>
>> Not a fan of how it is now, but perhaps if it was the dark triangle with a
>> hint of the 'gripper' lines blended on top it would work better.
> Ok, I can try to add some subtle gripper lines.
>
>>> * Toolbar/properties expand button look
> Guess this one was obvious, unconnected (+) buttons are confusing.
>
>>> I'd still like to change the font in trunk, but it seems hard to get
>>> an agreement on this. Some tests:
>>>
>> Again, I'd like to hear the rationale - I think the font in trunk right now
>> is very good.
>>
>> If it's to make things smaller and more condensed, be wary of cutting off
>> one's nose to spite one's face - you *need* whitespace in design, it's not
>> just wasted areas where more can be crammed in.
> I don't particularly care about the text being smaller, any gains
> there are very minor. I just think the current font is hard to read at
> this size, too 'smudgy', and the shapes of words aren't very
> distinctive. My impression is that there are fonts that were designed
> to work better at this font size.
>
> Thanks,
> Brecht.
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-- 
Thomas Dinges
Blender Developer, Artist and Musician

www.dingto.org