2024-07-18 User Interface Meeting

Meetings
1

User Interface Module Meeting 2024-07-18T15:00:00Z

Regular User Interface module meeting for planning and coordination. Last meeting was July 2nd, next meeting on July 30th

Attendees

  • Pablo Vazquez
  • Jonas Holzman
  • Harley Acheson

Merged to 4.2 Since Last Meeting

Merged to 4.3 Since Last Meeting

High Priority Bugs

Module Roadmap

  • Icon Refactor
    • Community Help Needed Converting PNGs to SVGs
    • This is going well, about 70% are converted to SVG. Might take another week or so. Harley will start creating a PR for using this as tool icons since color support is now committed.
    • This Proof of Concept includes the definition of keywords needing thought. Ie: “view3d.mesh_selected”, “widget.regular_inner”, “theme.axis_y”, etc. We talked about this and Pablo seemed happy with the current direction. Tool icons would use similar naming like “tool.transform”, “tool.remove”, etc.
  • Complex Text Shaping
  • Possible “Tabbed Area” project
    • Needing more complete mockups. Some notes here.
    • New mockup, but it surfaces questions about tab closing. How exposed would closing be? We discussed tab closing in particular and currently think that it would be not be as surfaced as Chrome tab closing, but be more analogous to closing workspace tabs, so off a right-click menu to avoid accidental closure.
    • Using just icons, and not names, simplifies it somewhat. Does reduce tab dragging space though, so might need to allow dragging of the icon itself. Pablo is not in the icon-only camp, so future mockups will include named tabs. Lots of utility in allowing custom tab names.
    • Pablo will work through some mockups.
    • Probably needs some feasibility tests and experiments before a go/no go

Review

Design & Discussion

  • Harley might plan another holiday to coincide with the Blender Conference. Another “Blender UI Today”? It might also be nice to have scheduled times for Harley in the lounge for informal discussions in order to talk to more users. We’ll try to think of something. Harley mostly just wants more time talking to more users with less down time.
  • WIP: UI: Icon Overlays #121138
    • With the new SVG system we could add specific icons just for overlaying. That way they can include a contrasting opaque background color. Not only could this include checkmark and “x” but also indicators of distress like caution and error. For example a blend file icon could indicate it is not available more clearly than just looking disabled. Makes sense to make some of these specifically for overlaying status with a lower-resolution grid. Harley will do this part of the other icon changes.
  • Layout items shown as badges or tags. If we had the option to show a layout item with an outline or reversed then we could use those in some places on the Status Bar for items that don’t fit in a square well, like “Ctrl”. We could also use them selectable badges or tag lists. We talked about this and can’t find other uses outside of Status Bar for a few items. Will leave this for now.
  • Lots of discussion of icons, changes, and future usage.
  • We want to split “Experimental” feature selection out from “Developer Extras”
  • We want to turn off terminal period in tooltips now that we have that permission.
  • We have some bulleted lists in tooltips using dots and others using asterisks.
  • Harley will look into text overlay color/outline while in Render Mode.
  • Icons look a bit brighter, not changing on hover they used to. Harley will investigate.
  • Lots of discussion with Jonas Holzman about his GSoC work. We really like the coloring of the window caption with TopBar background color - Harley can also do for Windows 11 but not 10. TopBar menus move from the Blender window looks cool, but would miss quick favoriting, shortcut assignment. Using caption space for our content works well, but some issues at the extremes of OS or Blender scales. Design issues regarding blend file name. Would be much nicer if we could move Scene and View layer selectors.
  • Lots of discussion of window placement and sizing on multiple monitors on Mac. Jonas has lots of ideas about refactoring for this. Might need monitor argument for window creation since Mac is (best) not using a combined desktop. Ultimately we also want to colorspace information from each monitor too.
  • Jonas had some really nice ideas for changes to the color picker.
  • Jonas has plans to implement Mac Copy/Paste Images after other work is done.
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