[Bf-funboard] William's ideas

[William Reynish]

 --- Matt Ebb <matt@mke3.net> wrote: 


> >> Proposal 1 - Vertical text in collapsed
> horisontal panels
> >> http://www.shadeless.dk/request1.jpg
> 
> Yep, it's ideally better than just a single letter,
> but according to Ton,
> it's difficult to do in OpenGL and accounting for
> different font sizes, etc.
> Even though text is much harder to read when
> vertical it's still an
> improvement, and this can be put on the list and if
> there's time, can look
> into it further.

It may not be the most important thing in the world,
but I think it would definetely help readability. I
can't remember what "O" is! Good to hear that you are
at least considering.

> 
> >> Proposal 2 - Consistant arrows and menus
> >> http://www.shadeless.dk/request2.jpg
> 
> As long as the menus are there by dedault, it's not
> a big deal to add this.
> Thorsten is right about the disclusure triangle
> being somewhat abused here
> though :). I can implement it with the triangle for
> now, but can someone
> think of a better icon? Groo's sideways triangle
> ideas are good, but they'd
> need to look different to the disclosure triangles
> to prevent confusion. Can
> someone come up with a mockup for this icon?
 
Great. Well if it was me I'd go with the arrows, but
lets see what people suggest!


> >> Proposal 5 - include Grab, Rotate and Scale in
> menus
> >> http://www.shadeless.dk/request5.jpg
> 
> As mentioned before, grab, rotate, scale are all
> dependent on the mouse
> pointer's position. Try using the grab/rotate/scale
> options in the pre 2.3
> menus and you'll see how awful it is using it from a
> fixed position. Not
> only is it uncomfortable, but including these in the
> menus could lead a
> newbie to believe that that's the way Blender is
> *meant* to work which is
> leaving a very bad impression. A solution could be
> to warp the pointer to
> near the object's location, or to the center of the
> window, or something,
> when the option is selected but that could be
> annoying. It woudl be great to
> include those options in the menu, but we need a
> good proposal on how to do
> it, that takes these issues into account.

I liked the idea of warping the cursor and drwing a
line to where it warped, although I can imagine it
would be alot of work to do. I seriously think you
should incorporate the new Toolbox BEFORE you release
2.30. It is a very important aspect of the new UI
redesign, and it sounds like it will work very
cleverly with context-sesitiveness. I really looking
forward to the new toolbox!

Could you not (as someone suggested) display an
alpha-2.30 at the Blender meeting? This would be much
better! It would mean we could use alot of time on
perfecting the new UI.

 
> >> Proposal 6 - More preset Screen styles
> >> http://www.shadeless.dk/request6.jpg
> 
> This has been talked about before and agreed upon.
> What would help is for
> people to upload some example .blends somewhere that
> can be used/tweaked and
> included.

ok. I might submit something soon.

> >> Proposal 7 - New cool startup screen with new
> functionality.
> >> http://www.shadeless.dk/request8.jpg
> 
> It's an interesting idea, but can't be included like
> that. Because of
> trademark and legal issues between the BF and NaN
> holdings, the Blender logo
> has very clear rules about how it can be used, and
> can not be changed. If
> you look at Ton's reply to Landis a while ago you
> can see some of the
> rationale, but even neglecting the trademark issues,
> it's a common sense
> thing for design - the logo must be consistent at
> all times. A couple of
> months ago, I worked on a design project for Yamaha.
> They had a ~30 page
> style guide with guidelines and rules regarding
> usage of their logo - it's a
> very important issue :)
> 
> Adding functionality like opening up a welcome
> tutorial or something is
> great - I doubt anything like that (or links to help
> from the menus) will be
> in 2.3 though since it may take a fair bit of work
> (especially cross
> platform). One idea though, until then, may be to
> include a very small
> (<75KB or so?) PDF in the Blender package, with some
> basic introductions. It
> would of course have to be written by someone
> though.

Couldn't you quite easily make it so that the pdf
openend when you clicked on a "New to Blender?"
button? Ok, the startup Blender logo doesn't have to
look like my idea..

> >> Proposal 8 - changing all Load/Save/Browse
> buttons
> >> mockup: http://www.shadeless.dk/request9.jpg
> 
> Yup, that's good one. I actually wanted to do
> something similar, but using
> the folder icons from the user prefs. It should be
> consistent one way or the
> other though  - folder icon or ellipsis (...) ? any
> arguments/research
> for/against?

I always though that "..." were for loading/path
defining. I think everybody knows what they expect
when they see "...". They think it will open up a
window where they must set the right path / load an
image, file or anything.

I think it is very clear and logical with "...". At
least it is a huge improvement.

I'm looking forwark to playing with Blender in the
future! The future seems bright indeed!

-William Reynish (Monkeyboi)

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