[Bf-committers] UI changes from cycles branch

[Thomas Dinges]

I think it's okay to discuss button shading a bit though, but apart from 
that, the changes are pretty much straight forward and should go to 
trunk for sure. :)  Again, big +1 for this!

Am 24.10.2011 06:01, schrieb 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