Hi Tony,

> I don't think I need a visual display that some objects with name
> x are selected and some are not in the browser.

But if you did have different states showing for "all selected" versus "some selected", it would not do any harm for what you want to use it for (as a locator), right?

As long as "no selection" is blank and something is showing for different kinds of selection it would let you locate it.

- Michael

Hi Marc, I messed around some with Expression 3 to get some more idea of what you were referring to.

The part I don't like so much is that little box inside the layer swatch shows when something is selected, so it seems like if I click on it, it should then set selection also, but it doesn't seem to do that.

It seems like it would be nice to have something that showed selection and also let you set selection by clicking on it at the same time.

Now say there was a column of selection dots like Danny showed earlier - if you click and drag on one of those dots there are kind of 2 possibilities - a "drag/drop" type thing like you were talking about here, or a "swipe" action like how you can set a series of eye states with one swipe.

It seems like it could be good to have a "selection dot" that would work similar in behavior to the eye but setting selection of course instead of visibility...

Maybe right-drag could be "re-assign" and left-drag could be swiping, is that too weird?

- Michael

>> But if you did have different states showing for "all selected" versus "some selected",
>> it would not do any harm for what you want to use it for (as a locator), right?

No, no harm at all :)

Hi Michael,

> It seems like it would be nice to have something that showed selection and also let you set selection by clicking on it at the same time.

I'm not sure I understand; clicking on that icon would select all the items on that style, like when clicking on the name tag?


I've thought of another thing, maybe the color label could be outlined when at least one object is selected...


This could save up some columns.

Maybe only once it is outlined, a swatch could be draggable?

Just some ideas..

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I'm not sure I understand; clicking on that icon would select
> all the items on that style, like when clicking on the name tag?

Yeah, clicking on the selection dot icon would control selecting or deselecting objects, similar to how clicking on the name tag works now - it would basically take over those selection related actions, and clicking on the name tag would do something else instead, probably pop out a menu with some additional tools on it.


> I've thought of another thing, maybe the color label could be
> outlined when at least one object is selected...

Maybe, but it would be difficult to show the mixed state with that method.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> Still some open questions though, I guess a big one is
> - is it ok to shrink the available size for the name label
> by having a selection dot as another dedicated column?

I don't know what would be involved in the UI code, couldn't you make the browser panel resizable like the normal Windows sizing action, if not, an ini or option setting for the size, in that way it will be up to the individual on how wide they would want the browser panel.

-

Hi Danny, the difficulty is with the "inside" scene browser position mode.

When it is inside the side pane, it would be kind of awkward to widen it without making the rest of the side pane seem a little weird.

But maybe it still will be ok.

- Michael

Hi Michael, what you might think is weird could be useful to others, like the "WeirdBackwardsHide" script you cooked up, I use it all the time :)

Cheers

Hi Danny, possibly... But just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, I'm referring to this configuration here:




So note in that mode the scene browser is not a totally independent panel all by itself, it is an element contained inside the side pane panel. So it cannot really be resized just completely on its own without actually making the entire side pane wider and then trying to figure out how the other stuff in there should respond to that.

- Michael

I see what you mean, the only thing that I can picture in that situation is when you resize the pane to expand the browser the command tabs would not change and you would have blank space on one side of command tabs or both sides, to even out the space.

It happens now in adjacent mode.



Even more so when there isn't much in the browser.



Is it possible if the browser is in the "inside" mode and in the event of being resized to a certain point it jumps into "adjacent" mode ?

-

Hi Danny,

> Is it possible if the browser is in the "inside" mode and in
> the event of being resized to a certain point it jumps into
> "adjacent" mode ?

I don't know - that definitely sounds pretty weird, for a setting like that to change in combination with a width change.

I mean if you wanted it to be in adjacent mode it is better for you to set it to adjacent mode instead of having settings automatically bounce around...


But maybe if I cheat a little bit and let the name spill over into the "selection dot" column when there is no selection it would help to give some more space for the name at least in some circumstances.

- Michael

Hello Michael,

How about adding a setting in the options for the width of the browser. Would this help? Then people can re-size if they want to. Even if it changes the rest of the tabs. This would then be set to user taste and always be the same.

I have my browser set up on the opposite side of the window and I always change the width (in the HTML file) to be wider, but not everyone is comfortable with editing these files.

Though if screen space was limited enough that I needed to use the inside mode, then I would keep any names short to fit in the space available. so I don't really see that as a huge issue myself.

Not sure if this helps any.

Hi Tony,

> How about adding a setting in the options for the
> width of the browser.

Yeah, I've thought some about that too, and it seems like a good idea but maybe the setting would not apply to the "inside" mode one and instead there would be separate side pane width control to adjust the width of the whole side pane (including the scene browser in inline mode as well).

Maybe something along those lines anyway.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> Yeah, clicking on the selection dot icon would control selecting or deselecting objects, similar to how clicking on the name tag works now

Sounds good!

The swipe idea would be great and consistent with the eye on-off dynamic.
I don't think right-clicking to drag would be too much esoteric.

It might be just a little unsettling for those used to work in 2d vector apps.
But I think the benefits will largely outweigh those little discomforts...

I was thinking that if "no selection" is blank it might be a little hard to guess where to click to "select all" on this container.

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I was thinking that if "no selection" is blank it might be a little
> hard to guess where to click to "select all" on this container.

Well, I figure that if someone is interested in using the scene browser it won't take long for them to see some selection markers over there after they use it with some selected stuff.

After they see some indicators it should help to figure out that is a clickable area.

- Michael

A little late but with the thing about having a selected object indicator in the scene browser, I think the name in the browser can be:

Black: completely unselected
Yellow: some selected
Bold Yellow: everything selected

And a question: why is there a separate window for changing the name of an object instead of changing it inside the objects properties space like resizing?

Hi Ed,

> And a question: why is there a separate window for
> changing the name of an object instead of changing
> it inside the objects properties space like resizing?

That's because I anticipate there may be other kinds of named entities in the future like named construction planes or saved named views, etc... and it would be nice to have one standard "name editor" dialog that could be re-used for each of those cases.

- Michael

I don't know how this may tie into the MoI philosophy, but might this be a good candidate for Tooltips? They're only there when you want them, so everything remains nice and clean the rest of the time.

Maybe also a simple numeric indicator like 3/160, for how many are selected out of a group?

Martin.

Hi Martin, I kind of generally try to avoid tooltips for important information (like describing what a particular control actually does), because it leads to a kind of unpleasant herky-jerky workflow where you have to do stop everything and pause over top of various bits of UI to see what they actually do.

So it's a big focus with MoI in general to try and put some description of what a button does up right on the button itself, rather than a tooltip. That way the UI becomes more sort of "browsable" where you can do just a quick visual scan over it and see what things do right away.

However, having said all that, tooltips can work well for a kind of supplemental or extended information, and that aspect could be a good fit for this case. So something like 3/160 seems like it could be a good possibility to have on a tooltip.

The selection indicator itself (some indicator showing if all nothing / everything / partial objects in a slot are selected) would probably be good though to have right on the top level because then along with giving some of the basic level feedback it would also be a natural place to click on to do selection actions as well.

- Michael

Hi Michael and Co.
Yes, MoI's simple interface is one of its great strengths and it would be a shame to spoil it.
To try and help out, here are a few more thoughts for icon styles. There could be a bar-graph, similar to the Windows wireless network signal strength one, perhaps a needle type speedometer, or if there is enough room to get it in, something like the attached pic.


Martin.