Dang this thread is moving quickly.
Hey Harley, some really nice ideas. I like the darker shading and moving the check box, but like others wasn’t massively keen on the large +/- icons. What about using the current icons from the outliner? They are small and unobtrusive.
just a thought
The mockups with indention and same color back drop for open headers seem most easily read to me, although I like the icons from the outliner since that is an established ui icon.
What about color change for the status of the header? Not sure if its available for these particular icons in the theme settings…
Changed the shading a bit, and the button size once more.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to add such comparatively harsh colors like a bright green to the default UI. And while +/- icons work well in the outliner as they denote an expandable tree with multiple levels, I feel like in the general UI they go against the overall flow. Perhaps there could be a hierarchy of button, +/-, arrow, etc. similar to the established hierarchy in an official outline, although I can’t think of any place in Blender outside of the outliner where there is one list collapsed inside of another. Which is a good thing.
m9105826 - Those look nice, good point too. Maybe darker outline on the closed headers or maybe even a bit smaller?. Anyway, I just wanted to show what a change of color/value could do since user can make it what they want.
I like those round pushbuttons, in general. Mostly because they are so much visually stronger when enable than disabled. So they really don’t grab your eye on the closed panels which is great.
But enabled it does look a bit like our checkboxes. So in your example the line with “Sampled Motion Blur” seems a little confused. They are both toggles but look vaguely similar when one is enabled while the other is disabled.
Outside of those arrows/plusminus/checkboxes, I am a little disappointed that all these initial ideas haven’t gelled into anything that is radically better than what can be achieved today (post #37). I guess it is a good thing that the current UI is quite flexable as far as theming is concerned, but I had hoped for more improvements.
The best solution would be to have blender with the limitations as optional settings in user preference.
Show Panel Triangle [X]
Draw Panel Header Text [First][Last]
Draw code: source\blender\editors\space_node
ode_draw.c
Reprogramming the draw code is pritty straight forward.
The part that takes the longest time to program is adding the optional settings.
It would be a nice patch for people to test.
…
This one is my favourite.
I wish I had more to contribute, but I honestly think that Blender has one of the more elegant GUIs of any 3D package I’ve ever used. I think it’s rather telling that the best people have been able to come up with so far is bells and whistles/eye candy stuff rather than full on overhauls. At least for the properties panel. The GUI areas that I think need a lot of help currently are the T and N panels, which get insanely cluttered if you use a lot of add-ons. I know Ton hates floating panels, but I’d love to see more add-ons and operations have a re-callable window for setting parameters like the cell fracture function has, although with some changes. Something translucent like the updated T and N panels that could be placed wherever you’d like in the viewport would be great IMO, but that’s a much larger design decision than we’re meant to be tackling here. The F6 panel is a good starting place, but I’d like it to be toggleable and movable.
It looks good, but it seems more like a checkbox or activate/deactivate button, it don’t gives the idea that will open something, but maybe it’s just me… So the arrows or plus minus seems better to me.
Went back and adjusted the “pressed” button to make it less visually confusing and more in line with the existing “pushed button” palette.
I wish this forum had a “like” button. Yes, we didn’t exactly find a treasure-trove of goodies this time. Just a bit of lipstick. But like you said, that is a good thing and a testament to how good the design really is.
Now, regarding the buttons to expand the panels…
Let’s consider two aspects: semantics and design.
Semantics
Semantic-wise, the best is the +/- buttons. They clearly indicate the operation they perform: Display more / Display less.
The arrows are somewhat less clear but also acceptable because they are also used with the same semantic meaning in the UI of other software (e.g. Drupal’s collapsible form items).
The worst is the proposed round button. I personally don’t know of any other UI using such buttons with this semantic meaning. You may point out some to me, if you know any. My guess however is that it will confuse new users more than anything else. What I find interesting in m9105826’s proposal is the possibility to have the title part of the collapsed area. I’m not sure it’s the best choice, but it may be considered (see comment #39, page 2: http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?298335-Properties-Panels&p=2410343&viewfull=1#post2410343 )
Design
Assuming that the +/- buttons are accepted as the best semantic choice, we may now consider their design.
A recurring theme of this thread is to unclutter (en?) the UI and get rid of the visual noise: gone are the grip areas, the divider lines and it was even proposed to remove the expand buttons altogether (in which case the question of design would be moot!)
Thus, the +/- buttons should have a subdued design so that there presence is discreet instead of standing out like a sore.
The problem in the early mockups (page 1) is that they presented black (very dark) + buttons instead of the more greyish arrows. They stood out more than the arrows did. My guess is that people who commented against the +/- buttons spoke unconsciously more against the design than against their semantic appropriateness.
At the very least, the +/- buttons shouldn’t stand out more than the current arrows; if I read this thread correctly, they should be even more subdued!
Personally, I see them a small bump into the background colour casting a discreet grey shadow, just enough so that we can guess their presence for when we actually need them, but not too much so that we can overlook them and forget about them when focussing on the actual settings presented inside the panels.
So… Semantics and design… A poor design does not invalidate the most appropriate semantic.
I like this one with the ± icons we already have, very unobstrusive. Except that in the mockup the panels are too dark imo, need only a few shades darker. Also agree with post above, the +/- would need to be slightly less in your face.
I don’t want to be destructive, but this time I disagree about all proposed changes, apart from indentations.
None of them seems to me to contribute to clearness at an appreciable extent , and in particular the checkboxes on the right only increase disorder.
Just my humble opinion on a so subjective topic.
paolo
Fair enough, although the same icons are used to collapse and expand the menus in headers such as the 3D view. But I get where you are coming from, reserving them for the task of defining a hierarchy is a good idea.
I’m not keen on the coloured round toggles myself, I think they look a little ‘bling’, where the rest of the UI is quite subdued. (EDIT: Actually I take that back, theres quite a few blingy blue buttons in the default theme). So how about the n panel toggle icon. Quick mockup with n panel style toggle, content indention, shaded panel header and right aligned checkboxes. Just another idea for the pot.
So I liked harley’s original idea of removing the icons because it looks cleaner. But I agree with others that there should be something to denote that the panel is expandable. So here is an attempt at making them as unobtrusive as possible without reusing icons already in blender, but tbh I think it makes it look dated. Thought I’d throw it out there anyway.
Wow… I really like that. It reminds me of tabs that you would see in a binder or filing system. Mentally this feels more at home to me than some of the other mockups.
Hey Saint Haven.
I agree it makes it clear, but for some reason it just screams 90’s to me. Here’s another version, same idea but using the n panel toggle this time. I like the idea of reusing current icons if you hadn’t noticed 
I like this,but maybe there should be a color difference like in your previous proposal?
But maybe even with that I might prefer your previous one…seems much more clear,and you can use the color to parse quickly
I also like the checkboxes on the right
I liked the triangular version better, it matches the drag widget on the right. 
But either way it’s very nice. +1.
I too like your first idea kettlefish in #55. It’s quite clean and uncluttered. I don’t think it’s too 90’s at all.
But I’ve kind of wondered why the check box is in the header of the panel? I think initially it was causing the indentation issue that Harley first tried to tackle, but why does it need to be there as opposed to in the panel as an “enabled” item? Is it because people want(ed) an immediate indicator that’s it’s turned on without having to drill down?
Was just curious…
