Hi,
I noticed in cycles builds that blender UI is a bit different:
pic:
http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=12039
Does this represent future changes or just personal ui patch?
Anyway thanks to all developers of 2.5, it’s a great step foward.
I thought it was a bug.
I hope it’s not something that will be changed as I find it very hard to use.
the font, one of them is just awesome 
Tab header is a big improvement!
lack of corner markers and + buttons for opening collapsed sub areas (like headers) not so much!
No scrollbars and font for the win.
I am with MW on the corner buttons and little +signs. I need those quite often…
I do like the THEME of the Cycles branch. better colours, not too much gradient stuff. It is a lot cleaner from the word go.
I kinda like the lack of gradient.
I thought it was a build bug. LOL. Never mind, a new wind-wave, blender UI gonna change I know. About time. I never liked this hybrid 2.5 so much. Collapsing areas this way isn’t the best though. But UI for me means parameters, logical expressions and such. Nodal system is the best way to go. I don’t really care about fonts and buttons, 2.49 was just fine on this. On this only!
You can already reduce the gradient effect in theme preferences, but you can’t set this header design or remove the emboss effect that blender uses at edges of all subwindows.
Corner markers are usefull but maybe a smaller design would fit better.
Also, icons in Cycle branch are less saturated and darker looking more homogeneous.
I don’t wanna create another thread to discuss 2.5 UI or if it is better or worst than before.
I just liked some of these changes proposed in this branch, so would be very grateful if Bretch could provide his patch to apply this changes in other custom blender builds as users want.
The UI looks a lot cleaner, i’d love the ability to turn of all this widget clutter if i could, i use the old way to split windows and the n and t key shortcuts arn’t hard to remember. Less is more in my book.
It looks better, feels cleaner. Removing the scroll bars is good, at least in my case, I use the scrollwheel on the mouse…
Which in itself is no big deal because continuous grab is on by default (just keep moving the mouse).
I did find though that the horizontal and vertical scaling values in the node editor are apparently not clamped as of now, as you can zoom the node editor all the way into horizontal spaghetti and thin vertical lines
fixed in recent builds!
Better set up fresh scenes, New cycles builds aren’t compatible with older 2.5x builds.
MichaelW, we lost displacement modifier for good, I insist. Only crashes, as it uses BI textures and not images. As it insists to read view subs value and not render ones.
Its perfectly clear to me that an inconsistency exists in blender UI and it will be worse in few months. Expected. Now we have a hybrid 2.5 with a second cycles mode. This texture data still exists and I’m wondering what’s the use of it, or , where is it anyway. How can I delete these useless and wrong textures, especially when coming from old 2.49 projects and unfortunately are normal maps?
I’m really confused.
Better change the logo-icon and particularly the name of this app. Imagine someone when searching the net for a good tutorial. Blender should remain in 2.4x and cycles … whatever. A trollish statement… is it, really?
It’s the first time that this cycles nodal UI makes sense to me.
I think it’s too early to make a call on this yet, it’s just we don’t have a linear texture editor anymore with texture datablocks in the Cycles branch and thus there’s no datablocks to link to, I’m thinking this could be solved in one or two ways (though Brecht may still have a better option than what I’m thinking)
as far as the UI goes, I find this one to be a major improvement to the current official release.
I find the UI look of the Cycles branch, despite just a few changes, to be vastly better looking and less confusing than that of the “normal” release. The panel headers are absolutely superior, as one can actually start to distinguish panels effortlessly. The absense of all those widgets like those for forking/joining spaces are what I was waiting for, very good !
I would like to see the button for the space type to go away also, it just eats space 
for no reason. The right click menu can take care of that, just MHO.
The only thing missing are the plus buttons (but not their ugly looks and layouts) for the shelves. But then, I really dislike the shelves (sorry about that) as they also eat space in a dictated and uncomfortable way.
Anyway, whether inside in-view3d shelves or not, all the tools there should really be grouped inside tabs, not panels (the “Mesh Tools” panel is also too gigantic anyway and should be split) as it’s really uncomfortable to (un)fold panels back and forth and scroll up and down all the time. Modo has done it almost nice, almost because orienting text (for the tool groups) vertically is not as nice as icons that can be much smaller and not become unreadable due to certain space layouts. I’d like blender to utilize the tab system for grouping tools.
I hope it doesn’t stop there and keeps improving. Would be real nice if as much of the UI properties as possible were themeable.
Gorgeous look: simple, clean & clear.
Perhaps Brecht did this for his own comfort while working on Cycles. Maybe it’s his personal theme?
I hope they will look into it and see if they can implement some of it in main blender. Perhaps make it optional.
Although I don’t like all the UI improvements, I do really like the gradients and overall colour scheme much better. I think it flows together better, and doesn’t have as much contrast. Also the panel headers are definitely better (as xol mentioned). I dislike how everything has been toned down a notch, specifically the icons. I personally prefer the official Blender’s icons better, however it really all is a matter of taste.
I wonder if we’ll see a few of these ideas being integrated into the trunk or not.
Noticed one thing:
Unlimited scroll in the panels. bad bad.
I also like Brecht’s UI much better, less gradients, tab header, less emboss effects. I especially like the lack of scrollbars in properties, I don’t use it anyway and it takes up space unnecessarily for me.