[Bf-funboard] Large Blender UI improvement proposal

[The Fallen Weeble]

Grab/Move:

While I agree that Grabber should not be the proper term for the GKEY, I
don't think Grab/Move is necessary.  Grab should be sufficient.  When I
grab something, I typically grab with the intent to move, so Grab makes
sense all on its own.  Add to that the fact that Rotate and Scale are
options right near it and it becomes more than obvious that Grab has
nothing to do with these functions.  "Grabber" should change, but I
think "Grab" as a replacement should suffice.  Any further lack of
clarity can be easily fixed with decent documentation.

Help:

I disagree with the proposal to use html instead of pdf.  Pdf can be
more easily formated for documentation purposes and looks better when
printed.  Furthermore, both html and pdf require specific external
viewers (html still requires a browser last time I checked).  I'm not
entirely sure that this documentation should be defaultly bundled with
the release.  Maybe a couple files to get started with, but the majority
of the "documentation pack" should be a separate download as it could
potentially be very large.

Mouse:

I'd like to keep the mouse buttons the way they are.  This is not
necessarily because I'm accustomed to the old way and am afraid of
change.  I honestly find it a cleaner way to work.  For new users,
reading a little documentation before jumping in the app is always a
good idea, and this is not difficult to document or get used to.

Buttonwindows:

I like it.  Everything here seems to make sense, especially when added
to theeth's comments.

Realtime buttons:

No problems here.

IPO window:

While naming it the Animation Editor makes sense, I think IPO Editor
better fits the feel of Blender... not only its history, but the way to
work in it.  Again, documentation could easily let users know that it
functions similarly to other apps' "Animation Editor".  It's not a huge
deal, but I prefer IPO Editor.

Vertex Keys:

I'm not going to get into this too much, but as a number of other people
have said, the way the system is currently setup, although not perfect,
does make sense and should not be altered too drastically.

Text Editor:

I agree with theeth that there's an inherent advantage to maintaining
two separate clipboard buffers.  While maintaining conventions is
generally a good thing, I think maintaining blender functionality is
best here.  Not all OS's have a built-in clipboard for blender to write
to (last I checked, blender doesn't copy to the XFree text buffer).
This maintains at least something for text editing in Blender on all
platforms.  Again, clarity issues can be resolved with adequate
documentation (BTW, I'm not opposed to helping draft any of this
documentation if I were asked to do so).

Other improvements:

The problem your having is not a big source of frustration to me.  I
prefer the current behavior.  It suites me and, IMO, blender better.

Great clear proposal.  It makes it much easier to discuss these topics.
Thank you for creating it.

Later.

  Groo

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 06:45:43PM +0100, William Reynish wrote:
> I have collected a number of proposals for improving
> Blenders interface further. We have come a long way
> with the current version og Blender 2.30, but there
> are still plenty of things that can be done to improve
> the interface. Ton once said that he prefered
> proposals in html format with mockups, instead of lots
> of loose posts on the Blender funboard. Well, here it
> is: 
> 
> http://www.shadeless.dk/ui/
> 
> please read it carefully before commenting, and
> remember that this is meant as a help to the
> programmers, not as an attack on Blender.
> 
> -William Reynish (Monkeyboi)
> 
> Yahoo! Mail (http://dk.mail.yahoo.com) - Gratis: 6 MB lagerplads, spamfilter og virusscan
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