The first video of this thread made me think that the addon is totally useless because we have a solo mode that almost do the same thing.
Problem of blender’s UI is that titles of closed panels are taking more vertical space than your set-up. In small areas, unique open panel can push out of sight closed panels.
So, we have to scroll or press page up/page down anyways.
We could imagine a more efficient solo mode that would group titles of closed panels by 3 items per line and an automatic operation to adapt zoom of 2d view to open panel according to area space.
But it looks like your addon evolved as a tab configuration helper allowing to completely hide unused panels and keep opened several panels.
So, as pitiwazou suggest it; you should allow people to hide this configuration tool while they are using the tab.
Because it is also a lost of space while using the tab.
IMHO, you should not have this tab configuration area into a panel.
I like that you have made it into a box.
I think that + icon to open the box and - icon to close it would help to precise that this is always present, not hideable like the other panels.
Another solution could be to add operators to hide/reveal panels.
For example, grab handle of a panel and press H to hide it.
Grab handle of a displayed panel and press shift H to reveal hidden ones.
(But it would not be accessible to one-handed persons. Unless configuration of hidden panels was added to outliner like hidden objects are.)
zeauro, did you test the addon? For me, your opinions are a bit too much theoretical. My addon definitely isn’t a “tab configuration helper”, it’s ui based on tabs. Please, test the last version, it has folding of the tabs area.
fiendish55, modifiers are in right order. left to rignt, then next row, like if you are reading. Try moving modifier up and down and similar. probably shift+ click will be also enabled in the future, but it will take some time.
The reason I don’t want to switch the tabs for a certain area is that this would completely break the idea of the UI working at least a bit in an unified manner, that is logical and understandable, at least after some time of working with the setup.
Ok compromise let us then choose individually how many rows we have in modifier tabs since I want one row there (way more logical for me to have modifiers stacked top of each other than thinking them laying out in grid) and two or more other panels.
ldco:
things are getting more weird. I will have to go to ubuntu to test this… It basically says the panels are not there at all since the beginning.
Never thought blender python would work so different on different platforms.
Thank you for your patience and feedback!
fiendish55: I wouldn’t want to have far too many options, but your suggestions seems reasonable for me. Still I think this is a lot about getting used to things for a few days - I allready don’t think about the way I read things when tweaking modifiers, I just do in, because I work with the addon longer than one week. Advantage of saved space is this way bigger, however also full-width tabs will save you a lot of space for work and avoid scrolling…
main issue i am facing is … i dont want every single layout to be changed , there hsould be some option so user can enable tabs layout for only tools and property panel ,
draguu, by now you can, if you have the latest version on gumroad(now not official):
enable tabs folding. shift-click all panels in an area, fold tabs.
Panel hiding will be in the future in preferences, but pinning or activation of panels will be in the UI, so in the startup file/saved per file.
Open file ‘without UI’ to use new startup preferences in older files.
no you didnt get me , i mean i want old interface in prperties and new interface in tools panel , there should be switch for that in user preferences , check the image , i want something like this
Agreed, I think a lot of people will only want to use it for ‘T’ panel, there should be an option to choose which areas it is enabled for.
Great add-on though, will definitely buy it if you implement this
Looks like the folding is working here. Also, the ManuelBastioni human creator is working now.
For the code you requested about the modifiers, I only got those lines. So I hope you can get something out of those
so we can spare more space in the properties window, by managing all the tools in the leftpanel instead.
New update, which you can get through gumroad again:
ldco, I tried again to fix your issue, please test. Hope it works this time!
what’s new - mainly feature requests have been coded:
shift-click also for modifiers/constraints, for ppl who need 2 modifiers at once.
enable disabling addon for certain areas (currently property window, all toolbars, all UI N-key areas) (draguu, pitiwazou, Way2Close and others !)
folding of tab panel is possible
separate column number for modifiers/constraints - for ppl who like only one modifier in row.
lots of fixes - everything is hopefully more bulletproof.
The defaults have features like folding disabled, since I think they go against the logic of this type of UI, but I wanted to let users use the addon the way they want
pitiwazou, of course, there is saving the startup file, then you can open files without loading UI.
but for now it’s the only option -
I am not happy about that, but it’s a big question on where to bind the data.
I am planning to make it so that panel hiding saves with preferences, but it’s still a question, about what workflows people use…
What do you think, what would be the ideal?
