[Bf-committers] blender UI state

Vilem Novak pildanovak at post.cz
Mon Jan 30 13:20:49 CET 2012


I would like to thank everybody who contributed to the discussion, 
there's clearly visible interest in improving the UI,
 and I consider good proposals for the UI a valuable work for the community.
I apologize for not having really time until today to make myself a big picture,
 read all the mails in the thread and look into the proposals. 

Mindrones, thanks for taking up the task of ordering the ideas on the wiki, so much,
and  big thanks to Jorge Rodriguez!

I've also made a proposal some time ago, which is located here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:2.5/Source/Development/Proposals/UI/December_2010_-_Vilem_Novak

It proposes some solutions for tabs, scrollability, last operator area, sroll areas and a bit more. 
But I saw some very similar ideas are allready on the wikipage you started, which made me really happy. 
I really like the problem -> possible solutions approach.

Regarding UI decisions - I think there should be a board of advanced users who use blender everyday for production,
 who could be contacted by devs for specific questions on which solution of the problems to choose. 
 Why advanced users? Optimal workflow is much more important than first impression and is what 
makes a long time effect on the size of real user community. If you have a good first impression but in
 a few weeks you discover how many things are hard to reach, it's much worse than overcoming initial 
confusion with the help of good tutorials and then feel the bliss of having your work done effectively and fast. 

Also, the need to compress things together surprises me, as if somebody still would think all the blender data can fit in the 
screen. - Of course it can, but then everything can look like the super awesome layers button. (I hope the sarkasm is clear 
here). This button, Toggles instead of checkboxes, columns, compressed buttons with 2 letters on them - that is still old 
blender style. And as history showed, squishing something together just doesn't solve the problem...

So thanks, 
Vilem Novak


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