Dev:Ref/Proposals/UI/Toolbar

Toolbar

by William Reynish

Outline

This goal of this document is to identify issues and solutions related to the toolbar in Blender

Current Issues

• Toolbar is only accessible in the 3D View
• The list of tools is missing many fundamental tools (e.g. Bevel)
• It is being abused by Add-Ons and panels such as 'Rigid Body Tools'
• It takes up a lot of screen space (which will only get worse if added to other editors)

Toolbar Placement

Here you can see multiple variations on toolbar placement in the UI:

Toolbars in every editor

Add toolbars to all editors

Advantages:

• Makes tools available to all editors

Disadvantages:

• Takes up an enormous amount of space, leaving a smaller area left for user content
• Adds lots of visual clutter to each editor
• There's no good way to shove this into many 2D Editors (e.g. Graph Editor)

One Toolbar to Rule Them All

Advantages:

• Makes tools available to all editors
• Takes up less space
• Less clutter on the screen

Disadvantages:

• Isn't compatible with the multi-editor design of Blender

Tools as Popup

Press Space to get a radial menu with context-sensitive tools

Advantages:

• Takes up no screen space when not in use
• Works with all editors
• Can be more context sensitive
• Is compatible with Blender's multi-editor paradigm

Disadvantages:

• Isn't quite as discoverable
• Needs some nesting to get a large list of tools

Mini 'favourites' icon list

A small list of common tools displayed in a compact manner for each editor

Advantages:

• Takes up little screen space
• No confusing deep hierarchies
• Could be user-customized

Disadvantages:

• Doesn't have space for that many tools

Evaluation

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