Michael,

I knew there'd be a reason for the space. You'd think after using MoI for so long I'd have realized it.

And thanks for the tip about TextEdit. Its behavior has changed over the years and this one hadn't registered with me. Not only do you provide the best support in the industry for your own software, you also support Mac apps!

At your request, I'm attaching a graphic showing the alignment of the menus when MoI starts up. This screen is larger than the one I referenced in my message. The smaller one where things really get tight is my home machine, when I work on projects at weekends. Still, the second image shows how the menus run off the screen when opened. My main problem is when I have several objects in the Scene Browser/Items menu.

Given the reason for the space at the top, this is a minor issue that I can live with. I was just thinking it would be nice to have all that space at the bottom, but the only way that would work without the jumpiness you mentioned is if your context specific dialog box were a pop up floater. Of course, that would violate one of the cardinal rules of your interface design. One of the joys of MoI is that you don't have to spend time moving dialogs out of the way in order to get on with your work...

I may make the space smaller on my home installation, and put up with the occasional menu shift; but I don't think it would be worth it to do so on my main machine since I have more space to work with there.

Finally, thanks for the updated script! The Construct/Transform group is the only one I have any desire to split.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi Mark,

If it is the scene browser that is expanding beyond the bottom, you might consider trying Options > General > Scene browser position: Adjacent. I too appreciate Michael's SeparateSidePanePalettes.js to declutter the limited space of my laptop's small screen.

--Larry

Great suggestion, Larry. As I have more horizontal real estate than vertical, that will do nicely.

Thanks!

Hi Mark, you're welcome!

And yes, I agree with Larry above, if you're finding the space somewhat cramped then the scene browser in "Adjacent" mode where it will be its own separate panel is better than the "Inside" mode.

The scene browser "Inside" mode is good when you have a quite high resolution screen so there is whole bunch of space in the side pane.

> Of course, that would violate one of the cardinal rules of your interface design. One of the joys of
> MoI is that you don't have to spend time moving dialogs out of the way in order to get on with
> your work...

I'm really glad that you like it! :)

- Michael

The other thing is I know it's tempting to want to fill up every blank space in the UI so nothing is "wasted", but it's difficult for me to do that with the standard configuration because I don't want to require only high resolution screens and I also want to have space for future expansion with new stuff as well.

- Michael

Some times of the day, my vision does not work very well with the HiRes monitors...
Most of the time the extra real estate is nice.

- Brian