Multi Monitor - Multi Window - Papercuts

Having some custom minimizing behaviour, going to some place in the main window, is unlikely in our design. Since we can’t minimize regular areas, this would be exclusively for torn-off windows only. We can even have multiple Main windows. We should seriously ignore that, at least for now.

The big question at moment is if my proposed behaviour helps or hurts you. You would gain “always on top” and they would all minimize and restore together with one click of the one taskbar item. But you’d (obviously) lose the ability to minimize individuals.

If good, then awesome. If not, then we are still searching. Would an assortment of windows work? Tear off some that work the one way (on top, not separate tasktray icon, but no minimize) and others that work the current way? Although, to be fair you can always do that with “New Window”.

Everything you have done so far is absolutely awesome, thank you very much!
It is highly unfortunate that one is not able to minimize those windows seperately anymore, however I believe its still way better than before.
But I cannot speak for others…

That’s not a bad answer. This proposed change in the patch could be viewed this way:

It is required for one type of usage. Where you desire overlapping windows. An example would be having a single huge 3DEditor, but then have Properties floating over top of it all somewhere. This has been asked for years but just was not possible on Windows. It worked on some other platforms where the OS has better window management.

Then there are users like yourself, who are wanting multiple blender areas spread over multiple monitors. This change would give added flexibility in that you could select windows of this new behavior with “Duplicate into new area” or create windows of the current behavior with Window / “New Window”.

Although with Window / New Window I would prefer if that option did not create such a complex arrangement. I think “New Main Window” should give us a workspace similar to default as it does right now and at the size it does. But just “New Window” should open with only one editor, probably 3D view, and start off a bit smaller.

@Harleya Thanks for looking into this!
What I currently do in Blender is open a file browser window and I change it to the editor I want. But this way I can have only one floating window, because if I try to open another file browser it opens in the same floating window.

Yes, you can drag them everywhere and when you minimize the main window everything gets minimized.
Most of the 3d/video/graphic programs have this (maya, max, krita, gimp, photoshop, kdenlive, after effects, etc.)

Yes, that process marks the open window as “temporary” and blender only allows one of those at a time.

“Window / New Window” doesn’t do that so you can have as many as you want of them. But you have to clean out all the other editors from it most of the time. I think it would be so much better if smaller and cleaner. And maybe also add a “New Child Window” to that menu as well that has the “always on top” behavior too.

Because the windows have to start with something in them, choosing any particular one can be a bit confusing for newbies. So “New Window” always gets you a 3DView but you want Properties. This is a reason why I like the thought (that everyone else thinks is dumb) of having an “empty” Editor. Empty would be blank except for the change editor menu. Would make a better one to start with when opening “New Window”

I think here it is just our general non-overlapping layout getting in the way and making a difference from the others. We can’t minimize regular areas within our interface. So I’d have a hard time introducing a new thing like “The bottom-left portion of the footer is where minimized areas will go. No, not any of the regular editors you normally see, just the windows created in this special way”. LOL

Could be possible place a shorcut for some editor, show in a temporary window, and when you close or click in other windows close that editor?

I’m thinking in a quickway to show some temporal editors, like outline, shading,… that user needs some times but not all time in screen.

Actually I was talking about the main window, when it’s minimized it takes the other floating windows down with it.
About minimizing the floating windows for me and my workflow is not important, I rarely use it and it could be confusing.

Here is an idea:
All editors could be accessible from the Window menu under sub menus like General, Animations, Scripting, Data. If you open an editor form the Window menu you get a floating window.
Once you have the editors in the menu you could right click and assign a shortcut if you like.

Yes, there are a few topics in this thread. When the main window is minimized it minimized all other owned windows. Owned windows behave that way and are also always shown above their owner. That is the new behavior recently introduced with the the new File Browser.

But “New Window” and “Area / Duplicate into new area” do not (currently) create owned windows so they are shown as separate icons on the taskbar, minimize separately, and are NOT on top of anything else. That was part of the initial complaint on this thread and something changed in my proposed change in that patch.

The problem is that there isn’t a one-to-one relationship between windows and editors. So you could open one, change it to something else, split it into multiples, etc. After that it would hard to identify the window to a user in any way.

I made a quick mock-up of how minimized windows could look in a Blender window and do not think that it is particularly overlapping. I also do not see any issues with only those torn off windows behaving like this. I mean, people who use a window setup like this probably expect such a behavior, while users who use the traditional “one-window-approach” wouldn’t be confronted with it at all.

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Meh. The usage you are showing is far from typical. Start with default layout, Tear off Properties, then minimize that. Your indicator would be shown in the bottom left of Timeline and interfere with its scrollbar.

It is a far bigger issue than just where to put an indication. In order for there to be a “minimize” icon on the title bar it necessarily means there is a separate icon on the tasktray. So you are back to having many icons down there, part of your initial complaint. Could remove them when they are “fake minimized” by changing their ownership state but that would be even more confusing with tasktray icons appearing and disappearing, and you could minimize a window by right-clicking on its task tray icon but couldn’t reverse it the same way.

This complexity is why I said we should ignore that for now and concentrate on just fixing what is immediately broken first. It isn’t enough to say “other software does this”, it requires a full plan that makes sense.

That is true, but if you read my question before you will see that a similar thing is usefull to call some editors that you sometime needs. For example, sahding editor, that sometimes you only want to connect a node or things like this

Instead lets look at each use case. We start with the one long-asked for first.

Staring at blender we can right-click on any area, and select “Duplicate area into new window”. A window pops over top, but no longer dives below when you click elsewhere. So for people who want overlapping areas, that just works now.

Next we look at your own usage of it, having lots of windows spread over multiple monitors. We start by leaving “Window / New Main Window” exactly as it is now. It opens full-size with all the editors we see today and behaves the same, as a non-owned window.

But we change “Window / New Window” so that it creates an owned window like File Manager is now. But we open it with only one editor inside and at a smaller size. Now you can select that, change it to some other editor type, drag to where you want it. No extra icons on tasktray but you can minimize everything all at once.

With these in place you can already guess what happens when you select “New Main Window”. You get another big window that gets a second icon on the task tray. If you use THAT window to make new windows they are owned by that window. So now you can use either of those two icons to show/minimize all windows owned by either of two main windows.

This should be quick and easy, logical, minimal changes from how it is now, and should let you do anything you need.

Hi @Harleya, I also think it should be enough to have these two types of windows. It’s fine if we are able to open new windows of both types, owned or separate. The final layout should be saveable as Workspace and store size, position and layout. If a window get spawned by “Duplicate Area into new window” they can very well be in a separate window, but by dragging its corner, it should be dockable to another existing area in whatever window blender currently has ( in both windowtypes - owned and separate). It should be asked how the split shall be performed with the area below the cursor (dragging target area) and thats it. That way the dockable principle of blender is kept and it adds the needed flexibility to arrage things dynamically on multiple monitors and windows.

Another good thing would be an option to change the type of the window from owned to separate, back and forth (what would also need some sort of drag mechanism to identify the new parenting window, if its changed from separate to owned)

Owned windows should minimize with the main application and should be minizable alone, maybe to an extra line below the current status bar of the parenting window - the design could be like @morph3us proposal. The space for these collapsed owned windows is just displayed if at least one owned window is minimized itself and that space is collapsed again if the uncollapsing window has been the last minimized one of that parenting window.

The patch now incorporates the changes I mentioned. So selecting “Window / New Window” will create a window owned by the window that creates it. The window is bit smaller too and contains only a 3D Editor. That should make really fast to quickly open new editors for a separate monitor.

Give it a try and let me know how it works.

https://developer.blender.org/D6338

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I have now addressed the second item in this topic, which was that some multi-column menus do not fit when windows are very narrow.

I made a patch that collapses multi-column Enum menus into a single column when there isn’t enough room. So you can still change editors on very skinny windows like the following:

That patch can be tested here: https://developer.blender.org/D6362

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I am so sorry for my absence, life has been rather busy this week.
Do I understand correctly that I would need to incorporate those patches and build my own Blender version for this to work? I have never done this before, so am a bit overburdened with that task.

I will try, however, to get some time one the weekend for testing!

You would, and that would be appreciated. But no rush.

The patch for “always on top” windows can’t be accepted right now as there are unintended consequences for Mac users when non-temp separate windows are treated this way. A bit more research to do, and possible just making a smaller Windows-specific change instead. But testing of the patch for usability is still wonderful since the result would be the same.

The patch for turning Emum menus into single column hasn’t yet been reviewed, but I would assume it would require some changes once that happens. Estimating the size of something before it happens is always tricky and my method could be improved if desired.

But might be nice to get both in for 2.83 or so if possible.

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I am very sorry, but I am not able to build Blender myself.
Downloading the Blender files from git took about 3 hours or so? And then some for all the involved programs. Also, I really didnt find any specifics on how to properly apply patches, so I dug up a program called “arcanist”, which should make applying patches a breeze. However, I cannot even get the command line to recognize either php nor arcanist itself.
I am probably missing something, but its really hard for me.

Sorry for letting you down. :frowning:
I tried, but failed, so cannot say anything about the patches… :pensive:

Recovering old thread to check if anyone now has a solution in Windows 10 for getting all Blender windows on top of everything when switching to the application?

I use dual monitor setup and most times 2 Blenders open: 1 to manage assets, 1 for render scene. Currently it’s necessary to to click all Blender windows active in taskbar to switch from one Blender to another which is tedious, as I am doing it quite often during scene building process. And as both Blenders have similar layouts sometimes there is a secondary window from another Blender open in second monitor and it is easy to accidentially start changing preferences in wrong file.

Small annoyance, but it should work just by with Alt-Tab to quickly move from one application to another, which is not currently possible. Unless there is a way that I am not aware of and happy to hear the solution. :slight_smile:

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I hope this isnt abandoned, better multi-monitor support would be great as currently its quite a pain to use blender with multiple windows open