MOTIVATION: The current editor-type selection menu is a confusingly long vertical list of 17 items, 47% of which end in "Editor" (8 of them). After seeing a bunch of suggestions to improve this, I decided to experiment. After discussion and a bunch of experimentation, I settled on this patch. This is based on the same menu-style as the multi-column Modifiers menu, which works well.
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/54986
The four-grouping categories are defined as follows...
+ /* Workspaces - author new data directly */
+ /* Tools - alternate editing views on the data being created in workspaces */
+ /* Asset Management (Tools) - browse, manage, load, mix, and process assets for use in workspaces */
+ /* Scripting - Script 3d objects, the UI, and the BGE. */
..this patch obsoletes my previous patch for this menu...
Description
Related Objects
- Mentioned In
- rB60712d12eb89: UI: 4-column layout for the editor-type selector menu
D3112: UI: New 4-column layout for the editor-type-selector menu
rB7530cfccc2f0: Use 4-column layout for editor menu - Mentioned Here
- rB60712d12eb89: UI: 4-column layout for the editor-type selector menu
T54389: Blender Interactive Mode Outline
P239 4-column layout for editor menu
Event Timeline
+1! I love this direction. Node Editor should be called such. Video Sequencer is a shorter name. The "Tools" column doesn't quite seem to be the right name. Perhaps there should be an Animation Tools column that includes Timeline, Graph Editor, Dope Sheet, NLA Editor, and Movie Clip Tracker (never actually used any of these since I don't animate so maybe not all of these are animation related but you can still see my point)
This is a nice idea, but I'm not sure about the categories. Asset Management: How is Movie Clip Tracker and NLA Editor related?
Tools: There are no tools here. Seems random. Why do some of the animation editors go here, and some other places?
Proposed change:
Workspaces:
- 3D View
- UV / Image
- Nodes
- Video Sequencer
- Movie Tracker
Animation:
- Timeline
- Graph Editor
- Dopesheet
- NLA Editor
Scripting:
- Text Editor
- Game Logic
- Python Colsole
- Info
Data:
- Outliner
- Properties
- File Browser
- User Preferences
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I still think this would be great :)
@Julian Eisel (Severin) & @Jonathan Williamson (carter2422), could you guys take a look?
To summarize: The editors list is large and confusing, with a lot of redundant use of the word "Editor". It sounds like most of us agree the following grouping would be nice:
(from @William Reynish (billrey))
Workspaces:
- 3D View
- UV / Image
- Nodes
- Video Sequencer
- Movie Tracker
Animation:
- Timeline
- Graph Editor
- Dopesheet
- NLA Editor
Scripting:
- Text Editor
- Game Logic
- Python Console
- Info
Data:
- Outliner
- Properties
- File Browser
- User Preferences
Which would be arranged similar to this:
@Greg Zaal (gregzaal) I find your arrangement very confusing, cannot understand logic behind it. What timeline and properties window have in common? What Move clip tracker has to do witch asset menagement? IMHO its obvious that it it fits to workcpaces.
Second thing- We have whole bunch of animation editors (too much imho) in blender and many people ask me constantly where they do this or that. With "Animation" column things will be easier, learning curve will straighten a bit.
I propose to stick what @William Reynish (billrey) did. Everything is perfect clear in his solution.
Re design: Assuming we use the grouping as per @William Reynish (billrey)'s proposal -> LGTM
Re code: Looks mostly good from a first glance, only one code-style concern for now: Use tabs instead of spaces (see our guidelines). I'd like to know if @David Jeske (jeske) is still available to work on the patch or if I shall commandeer it? (I'll give you 2 days ;P)
And let's invite Pablo to the party as well, as he's the other module owner of the UI-team :)
The four-column is a good improvement, when combined with the column titles. It works for this specific case, but in others it wouldn't work as well. And I like @William Reynish (billrey)'s names and organization much better as well. It gives us more room to grow and makes it much easier to choose an editor at a glance, even if it does take slightly longer (mouse movement) to select some of them.
@Julian Eisel (Severin), assuming @venomgfx is on board as well then I'll leave it to set the target for 2.74 or 2.75; since it'll be dependent on any and all changes that may be needed.
I also like billrey's categories better than my initial proposal !
Keep in mind, the main goal of this change is not to establish what the categories ARE, but to stop the menu from coming up in a different order based on the orientation it opens, and to put the items in groups to make it easier to specially remember where things are.
I would love to see this implemented with billrey's categories.
I have mixed feelings about this. It really increases mouse movement a lot, makes the menu quite wide which reminds me of the same issue we have in the modifiers list right now.
Splitting the options using William's categories could help even with the current vertical layout. Also cleaning the naming for some options (removing the word "Editor" from most of them) as it was mentioned before.
The space-switch menu is a bit long, yes, and it's only going to get longer. But this needs to be solved with a different approach that can be used elsewhere (on modifiers list, color management, or the ridiculous example shown below)
One solution we already have is shortcuts for some options, by using the numbers or by hitting the letter underlined for each option. On top of this we could have a search field, that's activated on tab for example. So you open the menu, you can press any number or letter underlined to quickly go to that option (as it is now), or just tab and start typing what you want to search for. The search field should be non-intrusive like we have now on any datablock fields.
Anyway, this needs testing. Is there a patch with the new categories/sorting, that works against current master?
How does it increase mouse movement? By my measurement, the 4 column layout reduces mouse movement, by putting more items within a short-distance mouse reach. It also encourages muscle memory mouse movement, instead of visual-servoing.
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=55034
The patch is really simple, I have not tried it, but it should apply on current master.
@venomgfx, you showed extreme example but its completely different situation. If we remove word "Editor" from "Video Sequence Editor" whole menu shrink drastically in width (gaps behavior) resulting even less mouse movement. Next thing- in layout proposed by @William Reynish (billrey) we operate mostly on two first columns which also reduce mouse movement in practice.
IMHO even if mouse movements will be increased (which in fact is not the case) we still can get clear visual key for quicker and more intuitive navigation.
Actually I thought about reviving this again the other day, but think we're mainly awaiting @venomgfx' input.
Moving things forwards: Updated patch (see P239) and pushed it to the UI-experiments branch for testing.
Looking like this currently (in UI-experiments branch):
Agree that "workspaces" isn't the best term by now, but "Editors" sounds ambiguous too. Everything in this list is an editor, most even have the term in their name. Maybe something like "Main" or "General"? Or "Interaction"/"Interactive" since these are the main editors to interact with data visually. Or something like "Graphics"?
I preferer either general (main works too but I like general more). I would avoid Interaction"/"Interactive because it might be confusing with T54389. I dont really like graphics either.
I don't see any real benefit with this change. It seems it was mostly designed to cater to some users visual preference but it doesn't actually change anything for the better. It seems it was modified just for the sake of changing the layout. If you want to argue that it was a long confusing vertical list you might as well start changing the File menu (which has a "confusingly long vertical list" of 20 items and wherever else you see fit (following your logic). I'm aware the File menu has plenty of shortcuts but like I said, organizing the Editor types menu horizontally doesn't make it easier to navigate.
For the modifier list I can understand since it has a LOT of them, but for this simple menu which actually looked much better vertically, I simply do not understand. Also, before, the 3D View was the first one to pop up on the list which I would say is more important and more widely used than the movie clip editor (further mouse travel now, tsssssk).
And by the way, you still have 8 items with the word Editor, and I don't know about you, but I'm mostly guided by what the editor icon looks like, which you could follow either up or down easily, and now with the new layout you have to navigate up and down and side to side ;)
If you wanted, you could have added the same General, Animation, Scripting and Data headers to the vertical list if proper distinction is what you needed/wanted.
No wonder this task had been hanging around since 2013, I'd say it was because hardly anyone deemed it important. If this is the new design paradigm for the 2.8 UI overhaul, may god help us.
Well, anyways, I don't mind the new layout but it didn't really solve a thing, it just made it different.
Take this with a grain of salt, these are just my 2 cents.
@Charbel Nicolas (charbelnicolas) This is a bit moot, as the horizontal layout made it into Blender 2.8. However, just for anyone stumbling upon this...
The issue with the old vertical menu is that it FLIPPED the order of the menu when opened from the bottom or top, in order to not make 3dview too far from the mouse. This was a usability issue, making things hard to find (because their order changed based on which way the menu opened), and interfering with with fast muscle memory use of the menu. This doesn't happen with long "File" menus because they are generally opened from the top of apps.
The point of going horizontal was not "just to change the layout", but was to solve these two competing goals, which is to have the menu have a consistent layout regardless of initiation direction AND keep the most commonly used workspaces as close to the menu-initiation-point as possible. The horizontal design achieves this well. there is no vertical layout I'm aware of which better addresses these two design goals.
The only case where the horizontal menu places the 3dview is far from the initiation point is when the menu opens to the left (from the right side of the screen), but this usually results in selecting the outliner or properties, which are conveniently on the right side of the horizontal menu.
