[Bf-funboard] Toolbox idea

[Matt Ebb]

Ok, while I was going through the menu stuff, I came up with an idea. I 
wanted to post it now before it's forgotten (it's currently sketched on 
the back of an envelope that was next to my bed :P).

Now the rush of Blender 2.30 is over, and we can take a step back and 
re-evaluate things. One of the objectives of this new menu system was 
that the pulldown menus would be a very logical, structured system 
(perhaps at the expense of speed), while the toolbox would be fast, 
immediate and context-sensitive. I don't think this has been successful 
- the toolbox is still very structured, and based on navigating through 
the hierarchy, and definitely not as fast as it could be. In some of 
the research we did leading up to 2.30, the toolboxes from Wings and 
3DS Max were pointed out as being very good, as they allowed immediate 
access to tools (Screenshot of Max's quad menu: 
http://www.adamwatkins.com/s3_tutorials/images/final.gif)

So, the idea I had is to combine the W key specials menu with the 
toolbox, making a nice, fast, all-in-one control. Rough mockup here:

http://reblended.com/www/broken/interface/toolbox/toolbox_specials.png

The menu items around the outside would basically just be the specials 
menu, repurposed into a radial layout. It would update based on mode 
and selection, to show the tools that are relevant to whatever you're 
working on.

The advantages of this are:
- Everything is in the one place, under your mouse. If you want a menu 
item that's not in the 'specials', you can select it from the 6-way 
centre toolbox. This also means one only has to use one hotkey (space) 
for everything, which can be nice fast and habitual.
- Specials menu gets the benefit of a radial layout, which is easier 
and faster to hit and remember

A secondary stage 2 of this idea (would probably take a lot of work to 
code) is user-configurability. So a user could right-click on a 
'special' entry, remove it, add new ones, or change it to whatever 
command (that's available in that mode) the user would like. This way, 
you could set up your own personal menu that's tailored to your 
workflow, and have all your favourite tools one click away.

Here's a mockup right-clicking:
http://reblended.com/www/broken/interface/toolbox/toolbox_specials02.png

And how to choose the item for that button:
http://reblended.com/www/broken/interface/toolbox/toolbox_specials03.png

I'm including these mockups now, because even though it would take a 
lot of time and effort to produce compared to having it totally static, 
it may help to have these things in mind when designing the code, if 
this idea ever gets off the ground.

Anyway, something to think about.

Cheers

Matt