利用者:Jeske/MockupIdeaPanelConfigMenuSimplification

Mockups Requested for Panel Config/Menu Simplification

The Blender UI is very configurable and powerful, and it should remain so. However, this configurability allows new users to easily and accidentally get their UI into hard to understand states. Even expert users can too easily click the "+" menu expand/collapse.

The goal is to present UI mockups which can help improve the Panel Config UI, by achieving some or all of the following goals:

• making the panel config icon/button more subtle and a "less visually attractive pulldown target" - right now it looks like more of a pulldown target than the menus next to it, drawing new users to think they should be interacting with it. However, it's used infrequently, even for most expert users.
  • idea 1: make the normal state much more subtle while still communicating the click-target-size. add a hover-over effect which makes the pulldown capability apparent

• change the infrequently used "+" menu collapse/expand functionality so it is less accidentally triggered, confusing new users when their menu disappears.
  • idea 1: mockup a pleasing way to put menu-options such as this toggle into the panel-config pulldown itself (aka "collapse text menus")
  • idea 2: when the menu is collapsed, consider displaying the menu options directly in the panel config menu, so it can be used without being expanded.

• come up with a clearer UI feedback to indicate the difference between panel menu-line collapse, and region spliter-drag
  • idea 1: use an alternate mouse-cursor / tooltip / indicator when the mouse is going to menu-line collapse.. so it doesn't look like the standard split-drag
  • idea 2: remove the "drag to collapse menu line" behavior, replace with a small "-" button analagous to the "+" to expand button

• improve visual feedback and behavior for the panel-split operation and direction.
  • idea 1: make an overlay graphic and tooltip when hovering over the panel split corner which clearly shows (a) a description of what it is for (b) the activation locations for H/V split
  • idea 2: come up with a way to "long split" (aka, add a panel column to the right of a column of multiple panels in a single step)

• come up with a way to distinguish the panel-split and "sub-panel drag" handles, because they are clearly different from each other even though they use the same visual
  • idea 1: change the icon for one of them
  • idea 2: change the hoverover visual feedback for one/both of them

• simplify the panel collapse operation
  • currently it is too easy to split a panel when intending to collapse it, and once split, the new split must be dropped, and re-collapsed before the original collapse can be re-attempted
    • idea 1: when the user is performing an initial split, allow them to drag back to cancel the split and further to begin a collapse (like Vino's drag collapse patch, but only active during a split-handle-drag)
  • currently if the user wants to remove a panel, they have to decide which panel to "merge into" that panel, but only certain panels are valid merges.
    • idea 1: provide a panel-close option somewhere, perhaps in the panel config menu, or as a right-click menu option on the panel-grab handle.