i get the feeling this might not be the most effective place for feature requests. does anyone know a good place for me to put these things?
y’know how frequently, when you have narrow windows, the header is scrollable left and right by way of middle-mouse button? i think that’s great but i think blender should give the user some indication that they are not seeing the entire contents of a header - or heck, even in an interface window.
i’m thinking of maybe very small, brightly colored arrows at the edge where more buttons reside.
so if there’s more buttons below, you would see a little downward facing arrow on a window with more buttons off screen at the bottom. on the headers, you would see little left and right indicators depending on whether there’s more buttons off to the right, left or both.
i’m still newb enough to get tripped up by not being able to find something and this would really trip up ultra newbs.
and especially since blender windows are wonderfully flexible, and because you can potentially have buttons above, below, to the left and to the right of the visible area, i think these kinds of indicators would be a great help to many.
As for showing arrows to indicate that more content exists; yes, that’s a good idea!
However, making them brightly coloured isn’t, since this is more of a hint than a “you must do something” type of element.
Suggested something similar on William Reynish’s blog, where there is a discussion about vertical headers. I second, but small, simple and unobtrusive gets my vote.
no!!!, that would mean even less room on the screen to see the icons! Just get used to the middle mouse drag, you need to use it all the time for the main panels anyway! There will be documentation on using Blender 2.5 soon at which point we will all just RTFM, read the flavorful manual!
Is not a bad idea adding in the ribbon a pair of icons like “->” and/or “<-” to tell the user that there are more tools/settings available in the ribbon. I mean 16/32 pixels at the sides of a ribbon cannot be a GREAT ANNOYANCE at the ribbon, doesn’t matter even if you have an 1024x600 display (e.g. netbooks) considering the gain of a clearer interface. Not a bad thing at all. Of course the old method is good for mouse people but i think that tablet users would be more than happy to see these icons.
Would have to agree with stargeizer. I think that because of the whole iPad deal, a good tablet with touch (resistive?) and Wacom stylus control like one of the Sahara slate PCs at a reasonable price is on the cards and that the interface needs to remain as flexible as possible. I will definitely move to a good tablet PC as soon as I can afford one. Most of my design/plannig is still done with paper and pencil and would like to do everthing paper and pencil style on my lap on my couch with the family in front of the TV. I prefer direct feedback (drawing at the stylus tip) and I find a normal tablet and seperate monitor a little odd as I work all day with a mouse and keyboard, as a tablet seems like overkill to my bosses.
