2025-04-08 User Interface Meeting

[Harleya]

User Interface Module Meeting 2025-04-08T15:00:00Z

Regular User Interface module meeting for planning and coordination. Last regular meeting was March 25th, next meeting on April 22nd.

Attendees

• Hans Goudey
• Pablo Vazquez
• Thomas Dinges
• Nika Kutsniashvili
• John Kiril Swenson
• J Andrew “Drew” Medina
• Asher S.
• Harley Acheson

Since the Last Meeting

• Fix #136157: UI: Eyedropper tooltip remains visible in non-active space #136168
• Fix: Reset Widths After Hiding Region #136527
• UI: Show Curves info in viewport statistics #136070
• UI: Remove Frame Stalk When Timelines Minimized #136698
• Fix #136504: Clamp Scaling of Color Picker Value Handle #136566
• Fix #136420: Null check description in file_execute_get_description #136421
• UI: preferences.addon_show() | Skip opening another window if there’s already a preferences editor in the current window #136139
• Fix #135982: Do Not Use Large Custom Cursors on MacOS #136005
• UI: Status Bar Feedback at Corner Zone While Still #136900
• Fix #136479: missing Image preview icons for certain render engines #136824
• Fix #136781: Ensure Area Resizing Between Scroll Bars #136794
• Fix: UI: Remove tree view padding on right #136746
• UI: Use busyButClickableCursor for MacOS Wait Cursor #136735
• UI: Curves and Grease Pencil dimensions in transform side panel #136592
• UI: Use Previous Directional Cursors for Region Open Zone #136583
• Fix #136314: Outline flicker when resizing editor #136487
• UI: Use Icon for Panel Header Grip #134471
• UI: Allow Changing Editor Outline Width #126334
• Fix: Theme Editor dropdown label not updating when resetting to default theme #134844

Meeting Topics

Review

• UI: Do Not Open Neighboring Menu if Open One is Wide #136528
  • Approved. No downside seen.
• UI: Padding When Opening Menu When One is Already Open #135692
  • Approved.
• UI: Do Not Full Hide Scroll Bars When Region Overlap #136571
  • Approved.
• UI: Improved Display as Panels Narrow #136581
  • Pretty, but let’s get the other region changes in first and see how it all feels.
• UI: Allow Using Mac Option, Command + Arrow Input Movement #136904
  • Makes sense. Added Jonas as reviewer - he has further patches

Pen/Touch Related

• UI: Region Scaling Edge Highlighting #136337
  • Approved. Once these are in it might be nice to explore a ghosted highlight at region edge and mouse position, to show action between and before snap locations.
• UI Experiment: Decrease Tablet Drag Threshold With Pen Pressure #136685
  • Pablo and Hans will test.
• UI: Increase Gizmo 3D Part Hit Size For Pens #136847
  • Makes sense. We like
• UI: Highlight Region Scale Action Zone #136799
  • Pablo will test. It might feel different after other region changes are in.

Design Discussions

• Discussion of pen and tablet interaction.,
• UI Experiment: Top Bar Tabs as Pills #137070
  • We all like. Given it a 5.0 milestone.
• UI Experiment: Layout Menu #137066
  • No need yet. The code is useful.
• UI: Solo Icon Change #137014
  • Doesn’t quite do it for us.
• WIP: UI: Absolutely Positioned and Saved Popup Blocks #136995
  • Next step for this is probably a “Collapsible” flag (and collapsed?) for popup blocks that would add disclosure triangle and maybe gripper.
• UI: Icon Decorations #121138
  • Mostly showing off the idea of using a ring to indicate property settings. No need for this yet. Seems to only work with flat designs. Needs mockups.
• UI Experiment: Snapping for View3D Sidebar #136575
  • For Pablo to test. Difficult to choose snapping locations. Might feel differently after other region changes. It might be nice to snap to tabs-only position and then add to code to expand region on tab click.
• WIP: VSE: Refactor and improve Slip Operator - blender - Blender Projects #137072
  • Love it. Lots of discussion of this, if best to truncate or round to frames, how to show changes.
• VSE: Blade Tool Cursor - blender - Blender Projects #136749
  • Awesome. We should probably make platform-specific aliased versions of this once it gets in.
• Timeline has issues when very small and there are markers. Harley will investigate.

[Christopher_Tyler]

The default colors for the NLA editor are painful to work with. We can change them, but we really need the ability to have the objects listed in the NLA be bold, or at least something that can be set differently from the rest of the text in editor. It’s a real visual challenge using the NLA editor because of everything going on, and being able to have the names of the objects stand out from all the other text would be so useful. I’ve mocked up what would be so useful.

[Bobo_The_Imp]

Won’t the NLA eventually be removed because of layered animation coming (eventually)? That seems like a decent amount of work for something that will be faded out at some point.

[trilok_singh_mehta]

@Bobo_The_Imp

Won’t the NLA eventually be removed because of layered animation coming (eventually)?

i don’t think so , they might redesign it.

[Christopher_Tyler]

Here’s another thing about the current system I would love an adjustment too. There are too many visually identical keyframes in an animation and it’s visually a pain to parse through.

Right now if we have an animated element, the keyframe is shown on that element track, along with a keyframe above it in the hierarchy, and another above that. It’s a visual pain in complex animations to just glance and see where your eye should lock onto to make a key change.

What I would love to see is those ‘secondary’ keys be deprecated visually when a hierarchy is expanded so the eye can quickly see where root key is that’s on the element being animated.

[Austin-Berenyi]

Love this idea. As a beginner the stacked keyframes were very difficult for me to understand, but I understand the need for them. This proposal is a great middle ground!

[GeorgiaPacific]

That is such a great idea and a good mockup! I would hope that this gets implemented. Great quality of life improvement for Blender users.

[Austin-Berenyi]

I’d happily upvote a Right-Click Select post on this topic