[Bf-committers] Addressing Vertical Tab Concerns - Followup

Campbell Barton ideasman42 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 9 23:07:37 CET 2014


There was a lot of open discussion here.
https://developer.blender.org/T37601

You can add comments there still, and worth reading over the existing
comments too.


Of course theres discussions on developer.blender.org all the time and
its sometimes hard to know which discussions result in changes being
pushed into Blender. (hint - check on the ones approved by Brecht van
Lommel and Johnathan Williamson).

I don't really like the implication that if we had more money or
better UI designers we would have some better solution, vertical text
is a compromise, but applications from large companies made this
trade-off too (somehow without user revolt). Not that this
automatically validates using vertical text - just noting this isn't
new or outlandishly different - there are happy Maya, MSVC and Modo
users out there right?

https://developer.blender.org/T37601#115

On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 7:11 AM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi Vilem,
>
>> I don't see any real discussion on the page provided
>
> I miss the context you refer too. I've seen a whole lot of discussion, in many places... too many places and too much talk even! In the end the dust just settled somewhat.
>
> Jonathan summarized this in wiki here:
> http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Proposals/UI/Tab-Interface
>
> In my opinion the agreement was that we:
> a) should trust active contributors a bit - the UI team is really helping out and listening to everyone.
> b) should accept that there's no perfect solution. The tools panels in Blender were flawed to start with, and tabs currently only make it less flawed - but more usable.
>
> Basically the situation demands a lot more (design) work. But that's something only very few people can do - and these you cannot just hire, these you have to train by being welcoming and encouraging to people who actually do stuff. :)
>
> So - the current work on tabs is just a first step. Give it a break, give it time, or help out?
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
> Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>
>
>
> On 9 Feb, 2014, at 20:38, Vilem Novak wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> I wanted to ask in what aspect were the concerns actually discussed. I don't
>> see any real discussion on the page provided, and it almost seems to me this
>> space was provided just to ~ silence ~ any protests...reminds me of the
>> process in some democratic countries, where everybody can say everything,
>> but it has no influence on what will actually happen.
>> I mean, the serious issue is really that these tabs might not be the best
>> choice from the beginning.
>> My personal experience so far - they are better than nothing, but they are
>> not fast to use, hard readable, taking extra space. I think there are
>> definitely better ways to handle UI clutter. Maybe something less fancy but
>> more usable in work process.
>> Although this mail might seem a bit angry(and yes, it is.), I still want to
>> say thank you for your work. I understand you see it as the best thing which
>> can be done and I appreciate every effort in improving the UI.
>>
>> I would really love if the Blender foundation would as a deciding element be
>> able to step in, and would invest some money and time into designing things
>> in the UI. Then it could define some guidelines which would be based on real
>> usability research, and these would be obligatory for developers. I know
>> this is not such a totally free model, but my opinion is it would in long
>> term lead to better software. Now we have an experiment(one of possibly many
>> better/worse solutions), which will be in a release in a short time, and
>> will become a standard for a long time again.
>> Regards
>> Vilem
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bf-committers mailing list
>> Bf-committers at blender.org
>> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>
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-- 
- Campbell


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