[Bf-funboard] Blender UI redesign doc

[ph]

Thanks everyone for the texture paint hint!! It runs smoothly on my machine
(athlon2000+ 32mg graphic Blender 2.23)


  The UI revolution paints a nice picture. Most changes seem reasonable.
Overall a very good job.

  There are just some things I will miss or things that leave room for
questioning. So the following is not really a proposal, just my personal
opinion. This is important, because I will not be very careful how to choose
words (it's late, I'm tired). I don't intend to offend anyone, or diminish
anyones work here:

  The new fileselect has advantages, but I found two aspects of the old one
very handy: all files were visible, so if you knew your directory's content,
you could navigate more easily (the option to only show certain filetypes
always confuses me).When navigating through a town, I don't memorize the
street names, I memorize the buildings. The blendfiles were marked very
clearly. The coloured square is much better and faster recognizable than an
icon.

  I like the new button layouts (the transparent buttons in the toolbar
mockup is good). But:

  I don't think buttons really need arrows to indicate that they can be
increased or decreased that way. Well, the buttons are normally learned at a
very early stage and it takes 3 minutes with precise documentation to know
every possible way (leftclick, returnkey, shift left, shift-LMB-delete and
so on). The rest is extensive practising of the use. So 99.99999 percent of
the blender time in your life, those arrows are not necessary anymore.

  I see gradients appear on the icons and the buttons, the sliders and so
on. Okay, this is the style today, but it isn't mine (as I said, no
proposal, just an opinion).

  My main focus on the graphical component of a user interface is: how easy
can the eye distinguish the parts? What is leading, what is distracting? The
question could also be: how loud is it, compared to it's surrounding
elements? Of course ferrari-red and canary yellow buttons would be too loud.
Totally gray buttons would be much too silent. So far (regarding the
loudness) the colours of the buttons were carefully chosen and I like it
that way.

  The next thing is, is a composition element leading or distracting?
Gradients are not leading, except for a colour picker or similar elements,
where they represent value or progress. They are on the contrary useless
visual information. Pretty but empty and therefore distracting. The same
might apply to rounded edges of large shapes. What works for a button does
not nbecessarily work for a window.

  The same thing applies to the new version of the window borders. Of course
it looks better. But can you really distinguish the several windows better
now? Especially when using several windows of the same kind? In an
application that carefully watches where you place your cursor, so you dont
have to activate a window by click? Well, sorry, but I do not.

http://www.blender.org/docs/UI/screen5.jpg

The question I ask myself is:

how much time do I spend working with an interface and how much time do I
spend to admire its beauty?

Haunt_House