Honestly, Blender’s Python UI API is flexible enough to get you 95% there with Blender’s sidebar. Nothing prevents you from creating buttons with text, colored icons, or even popovers. Just look at the hardops panel for example:
The simultaneous access to the tools and properties (like coordinates for precise architectural modeling or landscape design) is still a problem, so you have to switch between tabs with addon tools and mesh props on every single action.
Btw, I don’t like horizontal ribbon layout in Autodesk products. It takes too much space and is harder to percept/navigate than vertical one in my opinion.
Yeah, but my point is, if you wanted, you could technically remake the 3ds Max ribbon in Blender almost completely. The UI Python API seems sufficient for that. You can then simultaneously access mesh props in the properties panel you can have multiple instances of, such as:
Yes there are object properties, but not mesh properties (like vertices coordinates)
Also mixing properties with tools makes properties addons problematic (like, for example, addons for measuring faces areas or slopes) because of no simultaneous access.
Yeah, that’s true, but I suppose it would not be that hard to instantiate that part of the UI to your own uber addon tab, so you don’t have to switch. That being said, I agree it’s cumbersome. What I’ve been proposing for ages is that the developers should be able to create their own editors panels with completely custom UI. That would solve it.
I tried but infortunately the menu 1D_Inc is talking about is hard coded and afaik python can’t interact with it…
Also having many add-ons editor could be hard to manage the interface (lot of closing and split areas), maybe having one dedicate addon editor for all could be a solution a bit like the modifier panel where you can switch addons from the menu
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I shown the opposite case.
Good point, I fully agree, Blender try to be similar to industry without noticing the value of their well-organized system of UI in 2.79 like T-Panel, while other indsutry softwares try to become like blender.
ı wish at least if developers really want that simple tools look, we can still keep tool icons in first tab , then other tabs can have addons and more detailed things as we had before in 2.79 as well as addons with colored icons and texts similar to hardops.
Yes Thats why I miss old 2.79 logic, simultanous access is really important, imagine u place a tree or car from addon then without changing the tab u can access camera view properties or object properties to move it or even addons can new sections to object properties related to addons like ‘‘convert this to editable object’’ , so creation and tweaking of properties can be accessed from 2 different sides simultanously, Also addons can be differentiated better, addons that change the properties of existing things can be on properties panel such as photographers camera properties while other features of photographers can be in t panel if they are releated to creation of lights or cameras for light mixer etc. Or addons that remesh things/optimize meshes can be on N-Panels while addons for adding assets can be on T-Panel,
Hi everyone, is there a way to flip horizontally the label of side bar ?
currently the side bar label is quite hard to read because it is on the right screen, but it reads from bottom to top, it would be nice if it reads from top to bottom, if it is in the left screen it is good if it reads from bottom to top
Thank You!
I find it “readable” as much as the other orientation. As long a you can read vertically…
Here is the readability rule:
According to readability rule, right side top to bottom alignment is wrong.
Software that ignores such rules has a readability problem.
Yeah, vertical text is weird. Don’t know what to do about it.
Npanel vs properties has always bugged me a little bit. I’d like to have control over what goes where. Be able to put npanel stuff in properties, and properties stuff in the npanel. However I want it, who cares what the original intention is. I just want to see information of whichever type I feel is relevant in the same place. I’ll be looking into it soon.
Thanks for this, although I still feel if the text is on the screen left of the monitor it is good to use from bottom to top, however if the text is on the screen right of the monitor I still feel the top to bottom is easier, so I don’t need to rotate my head that hard to read the one in the screen right.
Imagine you turn your head to the screen right and then you need to rotate your head to the extreme left so you can read from bottom to top, while if it is top to bottom you only need small amount rotation of the head. The rule alignment above seem doesn’t include this situation though.
In software like modo both sides solution is used, in software like blender single side solution is used, so we had a chance to compare them.
The main issue for both sides solution is that it less predictable - you need to focuse on vertical text, try to read it a bit, recognise which side it is aligned, and then rotate head in proper direction. This is quite cumbersome, especially taking into account that Blender’s UI is quite flexible and there is no way to define which side of a screen vertical text will be located at the end.
Side recognition is quite similar to USB 2.0 “superposition” problem - you try to plug it one way, it doesnot fit, you rotate another way, it doesnot fit, so you rotate it again and it suddenly fits.
In contrary, single side solution’s benefit is a predictability - you always know how to read it on a fly, so you never face such kind of a problems, which is very practical in comparison to other solutions.
That’s the best explanation for Text orientation I’ve read so far 
Though I have to admit that right side flipped doesn’t feel too bad on the right side of a multi monitor setup.
It’s kind of sad. I’ve created this thread in November 2018 pointing out that the sidebar visual UI design is just not on par with the rest of 2.8 UI (which was the recent version at the time). It was not intended to address all the sidebar issues, it was just intended to address the basic ugliness we all have to deal with to this day. There was a general agreement that the visual design needs to improve.
I did not just say “It ugly, fix plz”. I provided concrete examples of how it can be addressed. It wasn’t even any new visual language. It reuses the visual language Blender already uses for popovers, so most of the code for drawing that is already there.
It’s now November 2022, 4 years later. Despite the agreement, nothing changed whatsoever.
What happened with ⚙ D15395 UI: Scroll sidebar category tabs patch? It was good temporarily solution until there is dedicated UI dev…
There is simply no one in charge of UI at Blender. That’s the problem.
