LOL, ;-)

Hi Nick, you wrote:

> I suppose my concern for the style name/title
> comes from years of Autocad use...

I'm not sure if I understand this part though, because it does not seem like the AutoCAD layer dialog makes any kind of special highlight on the current layer's row, or bold the name?

I took a quick look at AutoCAD 2008 and over here its layer dialog looks like this:



So notice there that in the list of all layers, there is just a checkbox to show which one is the current one, no bolding and the "line item highlighting" is used for a completely different purpose, for a kind of dialog-specific selection state for which layer or layers will be affected by operations like delete.

I'm worried that making a kind of "line item highlight" in MoI like you show would be confused with that kind of a "selection of list item" system.


I guess in AutoCAD there is also a separate control from the layer list that shows the current layer and allows you to change it by clicking on that to get a dropdown. Is that something that helped you in AutoCAD? I'm not so sure about dedicating additional screen space to that in MoI though, since it is redundant with the scene browser ring highlight.


I could probably put in some kind of additional highlight that would not be on by default but that you could turn on by editing moi.ini .


- Michael

Hi Nick, I gave making the text bold a try, but I think it feels kind of weird:



Just does not seem right.

I'll see about an optional line highlight.

- Michael

Hi Nick, for the next v2 beta I've added in an option in moi.ini that you can enable to highlight the row of the active style so it sticks out more.

It does have a lot of that "in your face" feeling though, so this is off by default.

You'll be able to turn it on by this setting in moi.ini :
[Scene Browser]
HighlightActiveStyleRow=y

And this is what it will look like:



- Michael

I was just about to chime in here. I really like the way it is now and how sleek it is. Wanted to fool around with a few things to see if I could input.

I feel distracted if i have to refer to the browser pane for something I just want a "quick glance reference" of. I find myself "up in the viewport" more when modeling.

What about a swatch that appears in the MoI button on top. It didnt seem too distracting and also available with peripheral vision.

Does it ruin your UI?

Hi Burr,

> What about a swatch that appears in the MoI button on top.

The problem with that is that it is not uncommon for people to be interested in the name of the style in addition to the color.

The swatch just shows the color, so for that case of someone wanting the name, it is just not enough information.

I've thought some before about putting in a control similar to the style picker in the property panel here:





So notice there that there is a line that has the swatch and style name, and when you click on it it pops out with a list to pick from? That one (which works now) is to be able to see the style of the currently selected object.


I was originally going to put up a similar line as that in that same area for the active/current style.

But some problems with that - it seems to be confusing to have 2 similar lines like that, so it would probably only be able to be shown when there was no selection so that the properties panel was not showing there. That's kind of awkward that you can't see it in all circumstances.

Also it seemed to be less efficient - to set it you need to click on it to open up the menu and then look for the style that you want. The scene browser is more convenient since you can have it basically open already so you just go more directly to the one that you want and click on it rather than having to pop up a dropdown menu. So once I got it working the scene browser, I pretty much gave up on trying to put it in that upper area there.

If you are interested in working with styles a bunch, I more or less assume that you're going to be working with the scene browser quite a bit and that you will be looking at it and interacting with it frequently.

- Michael

Yeah after I posted I also selected an object and noticed that the swatch for the object properties was kindof right below there and with 2 so close, I probably wouldnt have posted that thought. But now that you remind me it has to have a name also (More clors than just RGBK), that is more a reason to chuckle.