[Bf-funboard] Space saving UI proposal

[Paulius Mscichauskas]

"I too would prefer to have more flexibility in where the panels go and
which ones are present. For example, I never use the grease pencil but
whenever I make a UV window I have to close it up to view the properties
below that I do use."

Somewhere in the UI proposals, I saw a proposal, which let's the user
hide/unhide panels from menus he doesn't want to see.
I think that's a great idea. I would definitely hide the "Custom
properties" panel and the "Grease pencil". I never found use for them
in the 8+ years of using blender.


"If floating panels were to be set up in Blender, though, I would like
panels to not be entirely independent: it is indeed useful to be able to
'stick' panels together and move them as a group without also having to
make them a 'window' of some sort."

I've described "Sticking together" in the paper. In short - If a
floating panel is moved to the bottom of another floating panel, they
snap together and connect. The user can detach them by using
"Ctrl+Left click drag". When they are connected, they move as a group.
In fig 4, "Brush" and "Shading" panels are grouped.
If a column group is taller than the 3D view, a scrollbar appears. So
that looks and should feel kind of identical to the classic "T" shelf,
with "region overlap" turned on.

 "One thing I'm not fond of is 'tabbed' design."
I can't imagine blender working any different then it does now, when
it comes to tabs. I never thought anyone was against that. But hey,
you simply can't make everyone happy when it comes to UI design.
Statistics of happiness is the way to go.


"For those who want the 'muscle memory' thing to work nicely, perhaps
there could be a 'reinstate initial setup' keyboard command, to move
things back to where they started. That initial placement would not be
permanently fixed by blender of course. Perhaps for the paranoid you
could have a a prefs option to disable panel movement once the initial
placement had been decided on."

In my proposal, panels that are dragged and dropped to the editor to
become floating don't dissapear from the menus.
Floating panels are kind of linked duplicates of the panels in menus.
I thought such removal out of the menus would be really messy and
confusing and may result in more special cases.... All that can be
avoided.

"No matter what we do, it is very important to have a universal setting for
tutorials."

Of course, floating panel layouts would have their defaults.
Blender defaults are what tutorials are usually based on. They should
be carefully thought through, because they matter.

On 09/04/2014, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> For those who want the 'muscle memory' thing to work nicely, perhaps
>> there could be a 'reinstate initial setup' keyboard command, to move
>> things back to where they started. That initial placement would not be
>> permanently fixed by blender of course. Perhaps for the paranoid you
>> could have a a prefs option to disable panel movement once the initial
>> placement had been decided on.
>>
>> Hope this is helpful,
>> Ruth
>>
>
> No matter what we do, it is very important to have a universal setting for
> tutorials.
>
> --
> Douglas E Knapp
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