[Bf-funboard] Blender UI redesign doc: Toolbox Pie Menus

Thunderbolt bf-funboard@blender.org
Tue, 23 Sep 2003 15:52:43 -0700 (PDT)


--- Ton Roosendaal <ton@blender.org> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In the UI proposal, the 'context sensitive' toolbox
> hasn't been worked  
> out yet. A system as you describe could work as
> well.
> Is more of a matter of research, finding a coder to
> provide an  
> experiment or so.

Exactly. I just wanted to start the discussion :-) and
I'll continue researching it.

> Is there a free package download that uses this? I
> would love to try  
> how it feels, also how easy it is to have it 2 or 3
> levels deep. And  
> how it treats sublevels that only have a few items,
> or what the maximum  
> number of items per level is...

There sure is:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jasonh/download/software/piemenu/TestPieMenu.html
It deals with adding more entries to the menu, and
multiple tiers, especially under the edit menu.
Although it has some label display problems. Floating
buttons, such as in my example, may be superior in
that respect. Also, the java source code is available
here 
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jasonh/java/edu/berkeley/guir/lib/satin/widgets/PieMenu.java
Would that help in implementing it into a test version
of blender?



> I have the feeling this radial approach limits a bit
> too much in adding  
> items...

That's true that pie menus aren't anymore effective
than linear menus when the list of items in a single
menu is large, I don't know how large, from what
research I've seen, it's some number above 12.

> -Ton-
> 
--Ryan Freckleton

> 
> 
> On Tuesday, Sep 23, 2003, at 07:26 Europe/Amsterdam,
> Thunderbolt wrote:
> 
> > For the styling of the toolbox, it would be more
> > effective to have the foldout menus to be radial
> as
> > well. Here is an example
> > http://cerris.com/piemenu-mockup-mark1.png
> >
> > This also allows smart memory. The user, after
> > selecting the toolbox item, would be shown a
> second
> > radial menu with the last selected item
> highlighted.
> > The user would then, without moving the mouse,
> click
> > again on toolbox item. To avoid confusion the
> toolbox
> > item's title could change to the last selected
> item as
> > well.


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