[Bf-taskforce25] Widget Colouring Suggestion

[William Reynish]

On 5 Apr, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Ton Roosendaal wrote:

> Hi,
>
> This is of course a temporary situation. We're experimenting with  
> it. :)
>
> The basic idea remains that widget coloring will be derived from a set
> of theme colors you've defined yourself, visualizing widget
> functionality or widget types, and matching the overal looks you want.
>
> We will also check smaller and more subtle ways to show animated
> variables. We could make the layout engine add space for a small
> icon/button, allowing standard input methods to edit it, and visualize
> whether the variable has a function curve, is being driven, or
> controlled by expression, and allowing a way to make a function curve
> editor to show the curve/driver.
>
> One thing is quite cool of the current flashy coloring though; it's
> totally clear and obvious for debugging purposes. Might be worth
> putting a theme option in Blender that does it, so you can optionally
> switch to it on a simple command, and back. :)

We have to find a balance where this information is as clear as  
possible, yet not totally distracting. Current solution isn't too bad  
I don't think - like you say it's obvious, yet non-intrusive whenever  
that information is not needed or not focused on - buttons that are  
not animated keep looking normal. However, I appreciate that there  
definitely are other solutions and it'd be nice if anyone with other  
ideas could scribble them down and preferably do some visual mockups  
of buttons in animated/expression/keyframe/driven states.

The problems with having a separate icon for animation states are  
twofold: first, you have to create a visual connection between it and  
the 'parent' widget, and second, you have much more clutter and  
information in the users face. These special state-widgets, just like  
text outside buttons, work nicely in layouts that are strictly  
displayed as a list - a la Apple Motion, XSI, etc, but probably not so  
much in Blender where buttons layouts so far are a lot more varied.

-William

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