Hi Michael,

is it intentional behaviour that only clicking on a collapsed palette header (tab, e.g. Construct) and not clicking on a collapsed section header (e.g. Types) result in collapsing other palette(s) if there isn't enough room in the side pane to show all UI elements?



The scrollbar disappears and some palette collapses the moment any command is launched and finished, but I would rather prefer collapsing other palette than showing side pane scrollbar upon unrolling a section (i.e. immediately after clicking collapsed section header).


I would also prefer collapsing the palette instead of adding scene browser scrollbar.



Petr

But when the list will be too long, scrollbar will be necessary? ;)

Hi Petr, yes that's actually the designed behavior.

The reason why is that the browser may end up containing a large number of items in it. So the browser is set to have its own scroll bar separate from (or possibly in addition to) the scroll bar for the whole side pane.

If it did not do that, then when you had a large number of items in the browser, you would have to scroll the whole side pane to reach the stuff at the bottom of the browser, at which point the command buttons would be scrolled away and you would need to scroll back up again in order to launch any commands.

Because it has its own scroll bar, it makes it possible to have it work like this:



So notice there that the browser is populated with a large number of items. But the browser has a cutoff and gets its own scroll bar, so that it is possible to have the browser active and at the same time not have to scroll up or down to reach the regular command buttons such as Draw curve, etc...


But one thing also to note is that the "inside" browser mode is intended to be used with higher resolution screens where there would otherwise be a lot of empty space at the bottom area of the side pane. It is not intended to be used on lower resolution where there is not very much space at the bottom, it will probably seem weird in that situation because you'll get things like doubled scroll bars (an internal one for the browser and a full side pane one), but in that case it means that you don't have a good situation for using inside mode, use adjacent mode instead there.

If you do want to use the inside mode on a lower resolution screen, you may find it necessary to adjust the maximum height of the browser to be lower. By default it is clamped to take up a maximum of 40% of the height of the side pane. But if there is not much room left in there, that may be a bit too big. You can adjust that in moi.ini:

[UI]
InlineBrowserMaxPercentHeight=40


It looks like on your screen you will get some better behavior to help avoid the full side pane scroll bar if you reduce that to maybe something like 20 instead, that will help keep the max height of the browser limited to a smaller area. But it will likely become rather awkward to use a scene browser that is too small but with a lot of items in it, the adjacent mode is the one that is meant to be used if you don't have a pretty high vertical resolution.

Please let me know if any of that doesn't make sense.

- Michael

Hi Michael,


>> the browser has a cutoff and gets its own scroll bar ...
>> ... By default it is clamped to take up a maximum of 40% of the height of the side pane.

Okay. Although, I still don't understand why the command palettes couldn't try to collapse first instead of getting the scroll bar for the whole side pane if there wasn't enough room to show scene browser while unrolling sections.

Petr

Hi Petr,

> Okay. Although, I still don't understand why the
> command palettes couldn't try to collapse first instead
> of getting the scroll bar for the whole side pane if there
> wasn't enough room to show scene browser while
> unrolling sections.

I guess that should be possible, I'll give it a try.

I wasn't really thinking about that previously, because that inside mode just was not really targeted to be used when you don't have enough resolution to have everything open with no side pane scroll bar needed at all.

- Michael

Hi Petr, I've got this set up for the next v2 beta, so that when you expand a section of the scene browser when it is in "inside" mode, it will attempt to do the regular sort of command palette compacting to try and avoid a full side pane scrollbar.

It does seem to make things work a little better in the case of inside mode with not a whole lot of vertical space.

- Michael

ideally I would prefer to work on the inside mode (and usually name part, add styles etc. after I have done most of the modeling)
where I'm getting at is if you look screen shot below, there is some "dead space". Is it possible the browser to make use of it?




another thing I was wandering is....Lets say I'm working on the inside mode...and tabs are expanded...now when I switch to the adjacent mode it goes back to all tabs collapsed... it would be cool when you switch to remember the previews state of the browser.

Hi neo, sorry I didn't get back to your other message asking about this stuff.


> if you look screen shot below, there is some "dead space".
> Is it possible the browser to make use of it?

Unfortunately it is somewhat technically difficult for me to make that work.

I do have an idea that I will experiment with though but I am not sure yet if that will be possible.


> it would be cool when you switch to remember the
> previews state of the browser.

Yes, I think this will be possible. I'm also planning on having it so that the state of the scene browser open/closed sections will be stored in a 3DM file so it can be restored when you open up a particular file.

Once I get some of the infrastructure to support that, it should also make it possible for me to preserve state between transferring between the different modes.

- Michael

no need to apologize, we are like piranhas especially when a new beta arrives :)

I thought to move post here since is sort of related. you and Petr have cover most of my concerns for now so Ill wait for the next beta.

thanks.

Thanks, Michael!

I have also upgraded from beta Jun 20 to Jun 23 and tried "Opposite" setting for the scene browser and it looks like it will be my second favourite scene browser's position (especially for extensive arrangement of object scene).

Except the "Browser" button is too far from the scene browser after switching to "Opposite" mode. Well, I can define a shortcuts :) ...

...but It would be nice if the scene browser could be opened & closed by clicking anywhere along a left edge of MoI's main window (or right edge if user swaps side pane and scene browser pane). I mean the same behaviour like Opera browser has for opening a panel - there is a narrow strip at the edge of the window with a small arrow in the middle of it and you can click that strip to open the panel.

Petr

Hi Petr,

> Except the "Browser" button is too far from the scene
> browser after switching to "Opposite" mode. Well, I can
> define a shortcuts :) ...

Yeah, having the button for showing it be a far distance away from it was
one of the reasons why I didn't initially have a opposite mode. I don't
really know how to solve that, since there is not really any good place
to put that same kind of toggle button on the left right now.

But yes a keyboard shortcut may be your friend here, the one for that is:

script: /* Toggle browser pane on/off */ moi.ui.showBrowserPane = !moi.ui.showBrowserPane;

> ...but It would be nice if the scene browser could be opened &
> closed by clicking anywhere along a left edge of MoI's main
> window (or right edge if user swaps side pane and scene
> browser pane).

That's definitely a good idea to try - but that one is going to have to go on the wish list to look at in the future at some point though.

- Michael

>>>we are like piranhas especially when a new beta arrives :)

LMAO. Poor Michael....He was a good man....Picked to the bone in the prime of his MoI! :O

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the Browser on/off keyboard shortcut, comes in very handy.
You wouldn't happen to have one for expanding the browser tree, maybe in your pocket somewhere :)

Cheers

Hi Danny - sorry there isn't currently any way to control expanding/contracting of scene browser items themselves through script.

- Michael

Drats! ok :)

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