[Bf-funboard] floating windows don't stay on top!

[Jude Jackson]

To that point, the current interface paradigm does not actually offer an
especially high information density. The properties panel, which is pretty
useful, actually requires a fair bit of scrolling to navigate basic info
that I should be able to see at-a-glance, and the information is mixed with
functions in one great big list.

The solution Adobe has been using since CS4 or so is what they call
Auto-Collapsible Iconic Panels, which is a bit of a mouthful but the short
of it is that instead of having a bunch of small windows you have to toggle
open and closed, you just keep a tidy column of icons on the side of your
screen that you can click on to expand the traditional tab groups people
are used to. Most tabs in Photoshop or Illustrator, even if you use them
frequently, don't actually have that much useful information in them, so if
you have limited screen space it is often nicer to keep them tucked away
until they're useful, and they automatically collapse when you're done.

http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2012/11/auto-collapse-iconic-panels-in-photoshop.html

Although the non-overlapping panels technically do prevent the user from
having to click-and-drag windows around the screen, it merely substitutes
one irritation for another. Blender's interface is chock-full of lists, and
it's impossible to use blender without having to scroll through lists
(which is actually quite rare in Photoshop or Illustrator. I'll grant that
either of those isn't necessarily as complex as Blender, but the fact
remains). At the size of my screen (1440x900, modest but not tiny), using
the default Blender layout, the Outliner cannot display all three of the
objects, and with the exception of Render Layers, there are no tabs in the
properties panel that are not empty that do not require scrolling to
navigate.

Anyway I've got things to do so I'll let that stew but the point I think is
clear enough: Users still have to manually rearrange the UI to access
functions and information.


On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 11:00 AM, Ruth Ivimey-Cook <ruth at ivimey.org> wrote:

> Karl Kühberger wrote:
> > I agree partly. The other side of this truth is, that it is NOT
> > always better to make the whole stuff visible. Sometimes it is
> > better to hide less important things. The user can get tired of
> > looking for the few buttons which he is actually using for a certain
> > task.
>
> +1 agree on that.
>
> Ruth
>
> --
> Software Manager & Engineer
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