Transparent sidebars such as with Region Overlap are just a huge waste of rendering resources while in Cycles viewport render mode - rendering is still going on under those transparent panels. They aren’t worth a 10-20% performance hit.
On one hand you have Brecht and Sergey and Lukas fighting tooth and nail for every bit of performance they can, on the other, a silly thing like a transparent panel just wastes that for no benefit.
Please don’t force Region Overlap on.
Region Overlap was slow in 2.7x, but in 2.8 there should be no measurable difference.
It has a few nice advantages, making it possible to regain empty space in the toolbar for user contents, and makes it so the scene isn’t pushed around when opening or closing the toolbar.
What do you mean there should be no difference? Obviously useless pixels are being rendered and shaded under the panel. Rendering those useless pixels takes time that could be spent on rendering useful pixels.
It’s not a problem in Workbench or even Eevee, but Cycles is a different matter.
There should be no real difference in terms of performance depending on the toolbar being overlapping or not, that is what I meant.
Region Overlap is not forced on, btw, you can configure it in Preferences.
If you would like the Cycles Preview to render only a subset of the viewport, use Ctrl-B to set your render region. We could make this nicer, with handles so it’s easier to resize.
I know. I was referring to the OP’s design if it was to be implemented. I’m just posting to make sure region overlap stays optional 
please never user vertical tabs again! people get a whiplash from tilting to read what it says.
PS if you use vertical than perhaps use bottom to top. Thats easier to read than top to bottom.
Why do properties need tabs suddenly? was the scroll method good which is version prior to 2.8?
Vertical tabs are harder to read, when icons used most of the time its not very clear what it is.
I didn’t know it til the other day ,but you can do tabs for the properties/sidebar in 2.79. Doesn’t look like it’s something new for 2.8. Good place to put addons ,since you can’t do it in the toolshelf anymore.
An important aspect this mock-up currently lacks is how the sidebar panel looks collapsed while still displaying what add-ons you have installed and enable direct mouse access to them.
See this.
Of course, because when I was making this mockup, your proposal did not exist yet. I could not see into the future and accommodate for it. And even if you made it before I made this one, I’d still probably not include it unless Blender developer acknowledged to include it in Blender. Only then it’d make sense to include it in my mockup
I think that sidebar must be redesigned, maybe I will do a mockup this afternoon
Just please make sure to create your own thread for that
what is this?
Are you in a competition place?
do you have to win some prizes?
No, but I tend to not like most ideas Alberto has, so I’d like to see them in his thread, not mine. We have very different taste and very different idea about the direction Blender should take, especially when it comes to UI design.
I like icon and horizontal text , or only icon solution .
These solutions are close to the goal. If only we can figure out how to deal with those tabs… vertical text is not the right UI design and is very bad for usability.
Is something like that can be the solution ?
Nop, I really don’t think that this type of solution could work out of a little part of the users.
To me it looks 1) more readable than the vertical tabs 2) once you get practiced you could find things faster
That’s not a solution to the graphical design of the sidebar, which this thread is about. Your video is unrelated.
How about moving tabs into buttons with popovers? They might go to the bottom of the editor(3d viewport). sidebar might simply be replaced with tool settings
As a result, the 4 sides of the 3d viewport might look like this.
Top: Header menus and popover buttons(such as pivot, overlays, shading, etc)
Left: Toolbar(T)
Right: Just the tool settings(N)
Bottom: Extra popover buttons(which was the sidebar tabs)
This organization might be really simple and easy to use.
In Blender Today, it was stated that the popover is actually internally treated as a panel in terms of coding. It shouldn’t be too difficult. This solution might also get rid of the horizontal text completely. Consistency between editors might also be recovered(since most of the editors don’t have tool settings at the header).
