Just talking about the UI, not processing and tasks. I understand you want professionalism. I hope that if some UI designer comes up with something that makes the look of Blender unique and recognizable, they will be applauded for their creativity, not shunned for their nonconformity.
I realize it’s not a popular opinion. This seems the second best place to have it be ignored. (Twitter is the first:D)
Very nice! I like it! 
Hi Jonathan,
Reading the wiki page about how to handle too many tabs. I use Sublime text editor in my day job and they have handled this problem in a fairly neat way. As you edit more files and their tabs start to pile up, you can use the scroll wheel to move through them. It’s hard to explain but very cool to see. It’s probably more difficult to program this ability into the tabs but I feel that it’s a nice solution.
Grimm
That method is already in, in regards to the tabs (icons) in the editor window. This method is also used in Maya’s attribute editor btw. The implementation is already in place, the question is is it the best method for a long list of tabs? I would push for the utter lack of scrolling if at all possible.
Motion trails in blender currently have an edge over maya 2014’s motion trails. You can see the spacing, and even edit it.
I think Blender should promote this feature when its out. But will it come out before autodesk brings out maya 2015 with motion trails with spacing and announce it as if it’s the greatest invention since fire.
On the tabs- I personally have no problem using vertical text ones. Maybe I got used to them from other software
Hi all,
I would like to give a thumbs up to everyone putting positive energy in this topic. Changes in a UI are always the most sensitive topics for any program. Whether you think it’s rational or not, good or bad design, and whatever long discussions we might have - in the end it’s far more important to actually do something and move on. It’s also important to give people sufficient room and freedom to operate in this area.
In the end it’s really not that important you know - it’s not life threatening, nor will Blender be doomed or so! Give the people who work on it a break, let’s test things with open minds, and if it can be done better we can do that anytime later. Blender is an open project you know - which also means it has to be open for people to work on it!
Laters,
-Ton-
The UI for them might be better, but performance is still dismal wth armatures. BTW, sorry for hijacking the tread with motion trail talk, i just think it’s a really good feature.
About tabs, vertical text can feel a little weird, so i think displaying just icons with tooltips would be a good option to have. We already have icon-only tabs in the “Properties” editor, so why not?
I was looking at the Add primitives part in tool panel
and why not use only icons no names
it would take a lot less space and icons are enough to show / ID what primitive is !
happy cycles
I must be in the minority than I hugely prefer text over icons. I can understand why the properties window’s tabs are icon because of the serious space issue.
For the tool bar I would hugely favor text. But that is just my 2 cents.
About tabs, vertical text can feel a little weird, so i think displaying just icons with tooltips would be a good option to have. We already have icon-only tabs in the “Properties” editor, so why not?
Are these icons on properties considered as tabs?
If so, we won’t use the new vertical tabs look there? Good.
If so, why we didn’t use this same style on the t-panel? Yeah, horizontal tabs, not good, right.
So, we will have vertical “tabs” on properties too?
IMO, we had a nice looking blender UI, for all who learned how to use it.
We are going to mess it up, without fixing the real problems of blender.
Vertical tabs on the left, horizontal on the right,
more to say:
under a properties tab, lot of subtabs are needed. What about them?
Of course we have the nice ctrl+click to have one “subtab” opened at a time, but…
we always had it. And, you didn’t like it, I wonder why.
The only needed was some fixes on the theme and change the shortcut.
A quick question? I don’t really model much with the tool bar not a big’ol fun for mouse travel; so correct me if I’m wrong. But some of Blender’s tools operate from the principle of where the cursor is when the tool is called this can make the toolbar inconvenient to use with some of the tools that are actually on it I think the transform tools and vertex slide are just some examples I can think of. Are the any plans to deal with this. I somehow have a feeling that this could be a big not easy to solve issue.
There’s a lot of discussion on how to fix this right now. It’s a large project, though, and so we’re taking it slowly and carefully. Currently it’s set as a target for 2.72: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Doc/Projects/UI/2.70-targets
The discussion is here: https://developer.blender.org/T37554
Sometimes, I think Ton is a ghost, and only I can see him
I totally read that in Ton’s voice 
All I know is that when reading a word, you read it as a word no matter what orientation it’s in. You don’t read words letter by letter. I can read the word V E R T I C AL in any orientation. Just like I can read an icon after clicking it several times. Why, because I’m not a seven year old.
I’m greeting Ton for his leadership. I’ve said harsh words in the past, but since the solution to the issues many users are concerned about is moving forward, my hat’s off to him. (Man, I’m not even into this thing. I’ve tolerated Blender’s shortcomings since 2.2x. ;-))
how do you feel about the vertical tabs on the right side ?
when they are on the right side like modo for example it makes it easier to see/get to (shorter mouse movement distance from the center of the screen)
I think they are better on the left given its current implementation. I the idea is that you will probably be more interested in whats in the tab itself than the tab’s location. I would like to see the same find its way on the right side of the viewport as well, plus in appropriate editors.
Personally i don’t mind having horizontal tabs on the left panel too, but there are more subsections so they’re probably better off being vertical. If vertical scrolling in the Properties panel is such a big issue, i can suggest something 3dsmax has - a maximum column width. Basically making that area any wider will divide it into 2 or more columns as shown here:
Blender’s tab scrolling is not the same as the tab scrolling in Sublime Text. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if it was. Like I said it’s hard to explain, but it allows you to have a lot of text in each tab and still be able to read them. Sublime’s tabs don’t scroll off of the panel like Blender’s do, they pile up on either side, so you can still tell if there are more of them or not.
Even with tabs you are not going to be able to get rid of scrolling, Blender just has too much stuff to organize and it’s just going to keep growing over time. Also I like how Sublime Text handles a long list of tabs, so it answers your question as well. 
Where are the icon makers when you need them? They’re all over the place when you don’t need them. :evilgrin: