Esenthel those pictures look sweat! A lot nicer then the old way.

Neat. I think it might decrease the learning curve for new users too.

Wow. The newest screen form editor looks fantastic

Guess I'm the odd ball out. I actually disagree with everyone and think the prototype is a step down. Looks much more complicated than the old GUI in my opinion. I think I'd rather be able to read text than have to decipher the meaning behind every icon. Contrary to what yvanvds said, I think this would actually increase the learning curve. I'm not sure I really like the recent GUI changes either.

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Like, Chris was saying, Overgrowth seems to have pretty good GUI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe2eEFf2EBw#t=0m20s

I like the ribbon style plus the fact that it feels more like an in-game editor. You don't have to build the world in the editor and then switch to VS to test it. I also like how they have their item browser (at 26 secs) and can easily see all of their meshes and just simply drop them into the world. Something like this would be awesome instead of the current implementation. Also would like to be able to group objects together (prefabs) so say you have an house with 20 objects inside, this could be moved around as only 1 object instead of 21 and can be separated into individual objects if need be and re-grouped back together.

Although i havent really picked up the skills to use the current editor yet, i can say atleast aesthetically i think this design looks much better and perhaps even more professional.

The only real problem as a new guy is that the current setup (or old) where you have many different editors for different steps in the work flow, is that it can be quite daunting working out how to move around the virtual space, in the world editor for example. Even opening files using left and right mouse buttons, Although after a while of using, this works brilliantly. For new people it seems a little unnatural.

A huge high five for development times! new features seem to be out each month. or alteast as often as i check for a new build. Plan to buy a license soon!

(12-21-2010 09:43 AM)Driklyn Wrote:  I think I'd rather be able to read text than have to decipher the meaning behind every icon

I agree with that.
That's why I haven't and won't replace every command with an icon.

Quote:I'm not sure I really like the recent GUI changes either.

is there anything worse now?

Quote:I also like how they have their item browser (at 26 secs) and can easily see all of their meshes and just simply drop them into the world.

I'll look into this.

Since my name was explicitly mentioned by Dirklyn, I'll respond once more :-)

You're right, Dirklyn, icons don't improve a GUI as such. What makes it better is the chance you can do things right by intuition. That doesn't mean you shouldn't read a manual of course, but it helps if things are logical.

This can be achieved in several ways. One is of course consistency in GUI and program itself. No problem at all with esenthel's editor.

Another is the similarity with other tools that do about the same thing. When I started using OpenOffice 10 years back, it was very easy because it looked so much like Wordperfect and MS word. When I started using Scribus, i could take a lot of what I'd learned from word processors and graphical design programs with me. You don't want to imitate others, but if there is some common ground, you'll make it easier for new users if they can spot the similarity at first glance.

The same goes for icons. By themselves they don't help improve the interface. You should only use icons when their meaning is very clear. If it is, and mostly this will be because you've seen a similar icon for a similar action in a few similar pieces of software, then it can improve the possibility that people find their way around by intuition.

IF icons are used in a good way, they can also be better because people in general are very visual-minded these days. Text menus are necessary for complex things, but you'll still have to read most of a menu to find something. Simply because as long as you do not read the texts, they'll all look similar. People (in general again) are a lot faster in spotting the difference between two images.

But I was not referring to the icons in the prototype. More the the tabs and toolboxes. They too reminded me of tools I did use before.

Perhaps a ribbon with text under the buttons? Their is plenty of room to the right of the buttons to make them larger.

Maybe you could allow the top bar to be dragged down and this would increase the size of the buttons and show the text?

I agree that buttons, by themselves do not help, however they speed up the process sense you won't need to spend as much time navigating menu's. A ribbon would be nice as in MS Word 2007, Maya etc. It seems to be where GUI's are going and are easy to navigate.

(12-21-2010 02:15 PM)Esenthel Wrote:  

Quote:I'm not sure I really like the recent GUI changes either.

is there anything worse now?

I suppose I am just used to the old GUI and some changes just make it seem a bit worse at first but might end up being okay once you get used to them. Like I'm not so sure I like how the Heightmap/Object/Path/Waypoint/Water/Custom buttons are at the top next to the buttons for the different editors. It just seems a little out of place or something... same with the Position/Scale/Rotate buttons. But since you can still use shortcuts for each of those buttons, it's tolerable I suppose.

(12-21-2010 03:59 PM)yvanvds Wrote:  When I started using OpenOffice 10 years back, it was very easy because it looked so much like Wordperfect and MS word.

Yeah, I agree. When I switched from MS Word to OpenOffice, it was extremely easy since their interfaces are practically identical (at least with older versions of MS Word). I actually started disliking MS Word when they changed their interface quite immensely when they added the ribbon style back in Word 2007 I believe. All of a sudden instead of having all these useless features that you never used hidden and tucked away, they exposed it all and everything instantly became extremely confusing. I felt like I was using a program I've never used before. Even finding simple tasks like Print Preview or changing your margins took forever to find and I eventually lost interest and switched to OpenOffice. That is what we need to avoid. Only use icons for things that need it (which in my mind is not a whole lot) and keep everything else tucked away in an easy to find and understand manner.

I agree that icons should only be used when their meaning is very clear and for the most commonly used tasks. I'd much rather have <10 icons for the most commonly used tasks instead of having 100+ to expose everything the engine has to offer. No need to make the engine overly complicated by throwing everything onto 1 menu, use submenus wisely.

I also am not liking the newest version too much. I really liked the previous one. Now I'm having a really hard time applying materials in the mesh editor. I also liked the previous layout of the editors better than this one

Please don't write very long posts

New style is very nice for me. I love ribbons, I tested programming ribbon-style menu (I used C# with DotNetBar) and it was great!

Best option: Users can choose, someone likes new style, other people like old style.

Perhaps adding a "Common" tab on the ribbon that dynamically fills with icons and options that you use most often?

I have found the ribbon extremly helpful in programs like Maya (don't like MS Word's though) becouse it has everything you need for what your doing in one place and you don't need to move around that much to get to qhat you need to do. All polygon modifiers are in one place, all NURBS in another. This is helpful.

I like Barthap's idea of choosing. Perhaps menu's at the top with a Ribbon that can be hidden with buttons that can be added or removed from each ribbon. Maybe even allow the user to completly cutomize the ribbon (names, icons, options etc). That might take some work but, at least as I write this, it seems like a good idea.

Why did you remove the weld functions, ExportOBJ in Mesh?

which weld functions?

Why do you need ExportOBJ?

weldCoplanarFaces()
weldEdge()
weldVtx()
weldInlineEdges()

Because I just so happen to use ExportOBJ in combination of Mesh.