I think it's great to build MOIs UI in a Html-Css manner. Its easy to customize, and if Michael is switching to the Webkit engine and perhaps supporting CSS3 you could easily set up a class for e.g. the corner radii of all Buttons and change it on the fly... With CSS3 properties you could even omit images for gradients and other stuff that is supportet.

Looking forward to V3 UI :-)

Hi SW03, re: CSS3 - yup that's exactly what's happening - along with the switch to Webkit I've been reworking the UI to be based off of CSS3 using things like border-radius and gradient fills instead of images for quite a bit of stuff.

So a lot more of the definition of the controls is contained within the CSS now.

- Michael

Hi Michael ...

Any idea yet when we'll see the first beta ... I know ... when it's ready :-)

cheers,
eric

Hi eric,

> Any idea yet when we'll see the first beta ...
> I know ... when it's ready :-)

Sorry, I still don't really know yet, but I don't think it should be too far off, I don't have too many more pieces left to finish before the new UI will be all fully functional. It is often hard for me to judge how long it will take to finish up any one particular piece though.

It's taken a lot longer than I had originally thought, but it should be good in the long run to have the UI be more self contained.

- Michael

""""""""""""It's taken a lot longer than I had originally thought"""""""""""""

I imagine you must had a couple of development ideas while revisiting all this code!

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I imagine you must had a couple of development ideas
> while revisiting all this code!

Yup, definitely!

- Michael

***CSS3 - yup that's exactly what's happening - along with the switch to Webkit I've been reworking the UI to be based off of CSS3 using things like border-radius and gradient fills instead of images for quite a bit of stuff.***

...cool... 8-D

Where is setting the base font interface?

Thank you.

Hi Alex,

> Where is setting the base font interface?

That one comes from the moi.ini file - look under the [UI] section for the UIFontName value, like this:

[UI]
UIFontName=Arial

- Michael

I dont know you but every day i work with MoI I feel the need of a more customized interface, every time more clean, more to your liking. Well, today I finally updated mine after a lot of time and confusion but here it is:

As you may have seen, I've taken some liberties with MoI's UI.

I feel that doing so has allowed me to increase my sense of ownership in the MoI concept, such as we all do that frequent this forum.
MoI is a "personal" modeling program, one that is comfortable to use, not bogged down by a zillion buttons or procedures and parametric relations that have to be drudged through.

I've attached a copy of my custom UI, but only the files that I altered and added.
These were intended for V2 and are provided for fun and reference.
If you know what you are doing and are confident with working with the MoI UI structure, then you may find some interest in this.

If you are not familiar with the UI then please MAKE A COPY of your original files first!
Also, I'm not sure if everything is there, so use at your own risk.



The changes I made were:

1) Lighting - I was used to the bland look of SketchUp, and MoI's default lights with the funny midway shadow thing was odd to me.
But when another user posted the thing about tweaking the lights, I tried it out and found this configuration that gives your model a slick plastic look... I like.


2) All of my tweaks that are allowed on any particular software follow a color scheme that I've grown to like. Yes, even my car is a muted teal!
The icons and UI elements have been changed in Photoshop to be aqua, teal and red.

I suggest tweaking them out yourself from PSP or PS by changing the "Hue" and re-saving them.

3) The View panes have a nice fade-out.
4) Added two commands to the pop-up bar in the views, one to center your selected objects and one to go to full screen with no UI.
5) Misc commands added to the Side panel.
6) Tweaked the bottom command bar, moved the view selector over.
7) Gave all the buttons and UI some "bling" treatment with a glossy look.
8) Custom .ini and .css color changes to everything! - Where most of the custom coloration comes from.

Note: I'm always in the process of tweaking the UI and would still like to add a few commands that are non-UI.
There is a fine balance between adding everything you want and keeping the UI pristine and easy on the eyes that Michael has intended.

If you find this UI useful and adopt it, I have no problems with that - just don't go claiming to be me and post tutorials of a questionable nature that would even make an old sailor blush! ;-)
And feel free to donate $ to the "Help get Majik Mike his own copy of MoI (someday) fund" c/o moi3d.com! ;-)

The lighting is great majik!!!

I always imagined you were a FormZ user! :o

You'd think, right? Every icon came pre-aqua & red-ed! (a trap?)
When I started messing with the demo, I said "Man! this must be made for me", ;-)
But it felt really clunky, and I remembered you had to go through too many steps just to do basics that should've been intuitive.
Plus it's UI felt like it was made in 1989.

It's got some powerful toolsets though, but just very hard to use (You must fully commit to it)

They also have a MoI-alike that is pretty cool, but I cant justify it. MoI WILL have those tools, and I can get around not having them for the time being.

> MoI WILL have those tools...

Gentle persuasion, my friend... ;-) Give a mad scientist enough chalkboard and time and he'll eventually crack the Theory of Everything.

He made the Flow tool... surely it'll all come in due time.


Pssst... (variable fillets, shear, FFD, groups, +2 multi-edge surfacing with tangency options....)

Hey Ed,

I really like the dark UI you made. Mind to share?

Greetings,
Sebastian

Sure, here it is but its all about shortcuts cause I removed a lot of buttons, but I think if you replace the sidepane.htm file with the one I attached you get the colors and keep your buttons plus you get separate tabs for construct and transform. BTW with "I" you get a plugin gallery.

Cool! Thanks very much!

Hi Michael, all,

I tried installing the darkui theme from ed17, but I could not get it to work on the latest V3 beta (see below). It works fine with the default ui if I copy back the original folder though.

I tried changing some css params and looked around but nothing worked. Am i missing something? (e.g. a file, icon or config option, couldn't see anything weird on the moi.ini file either). eventually I'd like to a crack at creating an alternative UI, but I'm not sure if its my machine that's gone broke. I'd appreciate any help on this.

Thanks,

-L

BTW, I'm on Win7 if that matters. :)

Hi Luis,

> I tried installing the darkui theme from ed17, but I could not get it to work
> on the latest V3 beta (see below).

I think that darkui theme was written for v2 - many mechanisms in the UI have changed in v3 so full custom UIs that were written for v2 cannot be used directly in v3.

One of the big changes is that the UI in v3 is specified more fully in the CSS with declarations for things like gradient fills and rounded corners. V2 used bitmaps for making all those kinds of things instead of CSS declarations.

If you want to make an alternative UI for v3 it would involve starting with the new v3 UI and editing moi.css , you can't really start with a v2 UI since it was built using a different system.

- Michael