2025-06-03 User Interface Meeting

[Harleya]

User Interface Module Meeting 2025-06-03T15:00:00Z

Regular User Interface module meeting for planning and coordination. Last regular meeting was May 20th, next meeting on June 17th

Present

• Julian Eisel
• Hans Goudey
• John Kiril Swenson
• Jean-Silas Moor
• Harley Acheson

Since the Last Meeting

• Fix #125944: Outliner: Child objects missing when linked to other collection #136971
• Modifiers: Change softbody fuzzy default value #137878
• UI: UIList: Highlight active element when hovered #139067
• Fix #139393: Show Knife Tool Shortcut on Edit Mesh Menu #139457
• Fix: Assets Browser: asserts on unknown import method values. #139537
• Fix #139157: Fix Movement of Numbers in animation editors #139549
• Fix #139248: Update IME Data with GHOST_kEventImeComposition Event #139557
• Fix #137735: Scale Icon Border Intensity by Icon Alpha #139610

High Severity Bugs

• Transport buttons missing from dopesheet in 2D animation view #139780
• Mouse cursor appears in walk navigation after hovering over gizmo #139681 Now closed by Campbell
• PyAPI Regression: UILists with custom filter string instead of built-in self.filter_name no longer work #139494
• macOS: unable to change navigation speed while holding shift #139422
• Clicking on “Go to Linestyle Texture Properties” in “Freestyle Texture” results in a Python error. #136359

Meeting Topics

• Tablet drag threshold not accurate #139623
  • Harley will talk to Julien Kaspar. Will try to avoid a user preference. Might tweak what different operations uses the pressure-moderated drag threshold, or revert. Will see.

Review

• UI: Popup Block Error Alert Indication #134084
  • We agree that we will need “OK” for these

Design Discussions

• Lots of discussion of tablet-related issues
• Lots of other general UI discussion but Harley was sick and neglected to pay good attention and take acceptable notes. He will be spanked. Sorry.

[0x777777]

Has there been any more discussion about touch UI updates? I got excited about that.

[MrBeep]

Why drop down lists (materials, textures etc) are not improved yet??? It is not possible to scroll them with Pen tablets. Please fix this asap!!! I suggest using Middle click to drag this list up and down.

[Hadriscus]

Ah, that would certainly be nice. There’s two separate-but-related things that bug me with datablock dropdowns. I don’t know the exact lingo associated with these interface elements, I hope this is clear :

The first one is what you mentioned, they cannot be MMB-scrolled so it’s not as handy as it could be when using a tablet (tablets usually have a “scroll wheel” of sorts that’s some distance from the tactile surface, and it has to be controlled with your non-dominant hand, temporarily letting go of the keyboard). As it stands, I think it’s also the very last place in the interface that does not support MMB-scrolling.

The second is, the scrolling event does not actually scroll the dropdown… it changes the “active” datablock (hovered, really), and then in turn, activating a datablock that’s at the top or bottom of the list scrolls the dropdown. The issue with this is, there can be no mouse (or pen) movement while scrolling, because moving the pointer updates the active datablock, and “cancels” the scrolling. It’s not so problematic with a mouse because a mouse can be perfectly still, but a tablet pen does not rest on a surface, and is subject to micro movements, and these can trigger the change.
So these two kind of combine in the worst way. I’ve taken a habit of always typing in the datablock dropdown, never relying on scrolling to find the datablock I am looking for.