Hi D, no problem - it is definitely more common for other apps to have that kind of min/max control like you are talking about, so I have gotten a few comments about it before, and it was something that I had considered initially for MoI as well.


> That's why I said "top left corner" since the viewport name is already located there.

Yeah, but currently the name is intentionaly pretty "low profile", it is nothing but text with a transparent background and does not look like a clickable element.

In order to actually switch to a min/max button as the main way to control this, that text would need to change, or it would need to have an additional button along side of it, either of which involves more UI inside the viewport, basically more pixels of the viewport covered up I mean.

It would not really work well to make the name both "low profile" with a transparent background and also at the same time make clicking on it the only way to min/max viewports, because it would not be obvious to beginning users that it was supposed to be used for that. It's kind of too important of a function to hide away too much I think.


One of the things that has turned out pretty nice with MoI's UI layout overall is that the top and left areas of the window are just devoid of UI controls and are instead dedicated to just displaying your scene. It kind of gives a nice open feeling to the workspace.


> I almost never feel the need to switch from one ortographic view
> directly to another, I always have the perspective view as an
> inbetween stop, so I see it becomes a little backwards
> in that case, yes.

Yeah the same thing applies from going from a maximized ortho view to a maximized 3D view as well - the min/max button would require 2 clicks (in different areas of the screen, so you need to focus attention on 2 areas to complete your action) while MoI currently requires one click in that case.


> But at least it would be just the ONE button, not a HUGE cluster
> of buttons to pick from... :-p

:) Probably if you use MoI for a bit longer you'll get used to it pretty quickly...

Most of the time people who are interested in minimizing their mouse movements like to set up that keyboard shortcut that PaQ mentioned.

And if you have a TabletPC with no keyboard available, it can generally be a problem to try and pick a little tiny button with the stylus, it tends to be a little less steady than a mouse since you can kind of take your hand off a mouse and nudge it by a micro amount which doesn't really happen with a pen. So larger buttons like MoI currently has rather than a small button can actually be helpful for the stylus case...


Anyway, as you can see it isn't something that was set up just for the heck of being different! ;)

- Michael