Hi Ced, the v4 SidePane.htm is about 95% the same as v3, there are some tweaks to CSS values and a couple of small structural changes like a an additional <div> wrapper around palette content, to adapt to changes in the HTML rendering engine. It's now using a newer version of WebKit and there a few differences in behavior from the old one to have better HTML standards compliance. Also MoI v3 was using an early version of flexbox containers that is now deprecated in WebKit, I've switched over to using the standard flexbox now so there are a few changes to CSS property names and container structures because of that.

Overall the changes are small tweaks though, nothing major. However, it won't work to just copy the entire v3 UI completely over, you'll have to reapply your changes within the new UI.

- Michael

Michael,
"For beta or worse?"

Perhaps 'beautify' the sidePane.htm code & add descriptive notes?

Then have a download area for ADD-ONS - it would be easy to customize so much - and facilitate adding the Lighting Options, Objects, Shortcuts & Scripts with an INSTALL checkbox where one could choose an EXPRESS INSTALL or CUSTOM INSTALL!

See below:

Hi Ced,

re:
> Perhaps 'beautify' the sidePane.htm code & add descriptive notes?

It's already as beautified as it needs to be and there are already comments in there about the different sections like the title bar, filename and context area. So no I don't expect to put any more in there currently.


> Then have a download area for ADD-ONS - <....>

I've already given you the answer on this about 10 times already.

- Michael

Hi Ced, I didn't design the color scheme myself, it was done by a professional designer. I've received positive comments specifically about that so I know that a lot of people do not agree with your assessment.

It's not likely to change soon so I'd appreciate it if you would quit with the snarky comments over and over and over again. If you don't like it then you are free to change it, which I thought you'd done so I don't really understand your continuing complaints about it.

As I've mentioned about another 10 times again, in the future I do want to ship MoI with a couple of different themes that you could more easily choose between. It will take some infrastructure work to do that, and I consider the color scheme to be mostly a cosmetic detail of minimal importance compared to stuff like workflow and reliability so it isn't a priority as of yet.

- Michael

Hello,

Ced, your customized interface is about a hundred steps backward in usability and clarity, you've managed to clearly demonstrate what not to do when it comes to UX design. I'd suggest educating yourself on what constitutes good UX before knocking someones work.

I didn't know it was called UX design, but a google search of "good ux design" brings up lots of information,
including different kinds of color blindness recommendations. I still have to read and study more.

MoI's UX is already superb, in my opinion, but maybe nodeeditor could use some alternative, lighter themes?

- Brian

I'd kind of like to combine the Construct and Transform menus, if it would fit. I think someone already did so.

I don't think he understands that things like the GUI Builder were made by "Chipp"!!! Along with 100's of the other things he's "managed to find"....(made by others in the forum. Not Michael)

I spent 9 or 10 years collecting all those, that he loaded, here by following the forum, and collecting them........

Hello,

UX and UI are different disciplines, UX generally deals with how usable a product is, UI is how it looks. UX and UI do not have to go hand in hand, you can have a highly usable product that is horrible looking (good UX, bad UI), and a product that is a bear to use that looks great (bad UX, good UI).

Personally I'd rather have a product exhibit great UX and be less worried about UI, I can live with things not being pixel perfect if I can move around the interface without struggling. MoI does a great job in most areas when it comes to UX, some industry leading in my opinion. I'd prefer if MoI simply made minor refinements over time to it's UX without sweating over the UI, why fix if it isn't broken?

Dear All,

I use MoI extensively with my work at least 5 hours a day, I find it a joy to use. It is very obviously that Michael has a considerable amount of passion that he has injected and continues to do so, which I know most here in this Forum greatly appreciate.

With reference to the ui, I find it refreshing simple and uncomplicated, unlike most other 3d packages that I have used and use. With such a fantastic UI it means that I can concentrate on creative design without getting bogged down with a clunky user interface, most of which I would rarely use!

Thank you Michael

James Elliott

An idea could be to split the forum in two sections
Main:where people can land for the first time and find modeling tips,workflows,questions about (what MOI is,what people need from Moi,after all... ;) )
Secondary:where people can find extra-stuff like math formulas,codes,nodes,java...HTML...CSS...???and maybe decide to leave modeling and become programmers :)
M

Yeah. Adding all the cool stuff is a nightmare. It's confusing finding the scripts, nodes, hotkeys, lighting options, objects, GUI customizations and worst is the paltry notes in the sidePane HTML code so you need to read the whole forum to figure out how to make Moi3d a full metal jacket!

Apparently my beef isn't popular.

Doubt I'll upgrade if I have to go through the whole process once more, may as well stay with Rhino, 3dCoat & KeyShot, at least it has the easy-on-the-eyes interface, and no need to find the needles in the haystack.
Cheers,
Ced

Hi Mauro,

>>>An idea could be to split the forum in two sections

Few days ago I found a good forum engine: https://discuss.flarum.org/
In my opinion it could be a best engine for a next generation MoI community forum.
If Michael will implement a tag system to this forum, it will be great.

Privet Max,
lately i found the forum filled by extra-stuff,as i wrote above
that stuff is useful but also in contradiction with Moi's Zen philosophy (be simple,be clear )
A user that jump into the forum for the first time and watch snippets of html code or some nodes can be scared ! :)
So,moving that advanced stuff into a secondary page could be coherent with Moi's Zen philosophy
All depends by Michael...being a one-man-band could have no time for these things
If he'll decide to leave the forum as is,it's ok for me!
There are ten years that i use Moi successfully,using same clear,simple...outdated :) but at the same time like a "fresh-breath" UI
Every time it was and it is a real pleasure!



Once again:thank you so much for all tools you shared with us Max !

M

Hi Mauro,

> An idea could be to split the forum in two sections
> Main:where people can land for the first time and find modeling tips,workflows,questions
> about (what MOI is,what people need from Moi,after all... ;) )
> Secondary:where people can find extra-stuff like math formulas,codes,nodes,java...HTML...CSS...??? <....>

The part that I don't like about having the forum split up into different sections is that it becomes more difficult to go through the newest conversations to see what I need to reply to. Once you have multiple sections some of them tend to get neglected and I would have to start doing things like tell people they're posting in the wrong spot and stuff like that.

I think that a better solution would be to have that "secondary" section for finding "extra stuff" to be some kind of script browser dialog that was built into MoI itself, so it could be more tightly integrated like being able to install it from that same UI as well.

There is also currently a wiki available as well: http://moi3d.com/wiki/Resources, that's probably a more ideal place for a kind of "index of information" to go rather than as a separate section of the discussion forum, and indeed if you go to the wiki now you can find links to Petr's and Max's web pages that hold a bunch of the most commonly used scripts.

But many scripts are not very generally useful to everyone, they're very often pretty specialized things used by a small number of advanced users. Just in general things that impact a small number of people don't get a high priority that's why I haven't dedicated time to work on that as of yet.

- Michael

Hi Ced,

> Doubt I'll upgrade if I have to go through the whole process once more, may as well stay
> with Rhino, 3dCoat & KeyShot, at least it has the easy-on-the-eyes interface, and no need
> to find the needles in the haystack.

Sorry that MoI doesn't do what you wanted to as of yet. I agree with you that you would probably be better off with this plan and avoid using MoI for the time being.

Maybe at some point in the future you might want to check back in since I do expect to eventually do some work for switching UI themes and installing plug-ins to be easier but it is not a priority at this moment.

- Michael

Hi Max,

re:
> Few days ago I found a good forum engine: https://discuss.flarum.org/
> In my opinion it could be a best engine for a next generation MoI community forum.
> If Michael will implement a tag system to this forum, it will be great.

Some previous discussion on that here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7573.1

It looks pretty promising!

A few difficulties though - it specifically says it's in beta release and not to use it in production ( http://flarum.org/docs/installation/ "Don’t use it in production." ) and it does not currently support IIS so I'd need to spend a lot of time fiddling around with setting up a new web server.

Then there would be a big issue about data migration, this current forum has 8294 threads in it containing a lot of information, it would not be good to lose all this information and so I'd probably have to do more work yet to port over everything.

So that's a lot of work involved and I tend to like things that take a lot of work to also provide a lot of benefit. The problem is that the benefit would be relatively small because the current forum is already very effective and easy to use.

There are probably things that would not be known until it's up and running like are spammers attracted by it?

I think it's more likely that I'd try to tune up the current forum some more before considering such a switch.

If MoI was just being released for the first time right now that would probably make things different.

- Michael

Hi Mauro, I guess now that I read your message again it's not about finding the "extra stuff" like I thought at first, it's more about filtering out the discussions of the "extra stuff" so that the "regular user who is just trying to model stuff" isn't inundated with a bunch of technical details that have no use for them, is that correct?

It certainly is true that MoI has an overall goal of trying to make complex technical CAD to be easier to use for simple things so I can understand where you're coming from.

It's kind of difficult though to apply it very well to this particular field of forum discussions, they can be rather "organic" in nature...

Probably at some point it's going to make sense to have a separate "developer" section but I don't think we're quite there yet.

There is already one type of filtering which helps with this already which is just having threads/topics - if a user has a specific question often times they'll post it as a new thread and then they can go back to just that thread later on to see stuff related just to their question, they don't have to chew through every single post in the whole forum.

Now if you're someone who likes to consume as much information as possible and so reads every single thread then that's a bit different thing and it's more fundamentally difficult to impose order on that.

- Michael

It appears to be that you have two DISTINCT major areas of interest:

1. The first time buyer.
2. The experienced CAD designer & code writer/node/script/ developer.

After purchasing Moi3d, I needed to focus on 'beginner courses' to familiarize myself with Moi3d. Take it for a test drive:

A) On this FORUM have a BEGINNER SECTION.

After I was able to drive Moi3d as well as my work required - I found there were holes in the fabric:

B) Began to search for LIGHTING OPTIONS, Additional tools (scripts) - hot keys - nodes - & other improvements in order to beef-up the bare bones 'standard' version.

After that I realized my interface was UGLY - cluttered - wrong-sized icons, too much text - whereas the wimpy pastel color theme was repugnant to me:

C) Began searching for LOCATIONS where I could add (either forum or my own) CSS & HTML to RESIZE & PLACE all the ADD-ONS & remove the excessive text below labels - and generally re-proportion Moi.

Then I realized I could change the whole text/color interface so that the space between the windows was black - by changing a PNG, and I made my own black-gray icons & headers & folders & TOOL TIP code.

D) Began searching for design layout CSS & HTML code and PNG's and finalizing the Moi remodel - and now it is complete & beautiful and has myriad tools for experimentation & design work, modded-out nicely.

Therefore I strongly suggest you divide the FORUM into A - B - C - D SECTIONS.

A: Beginner Area
Tutorials & Video Clips.
B: Add-ons & plug-ins,
Hot-keys & Nodes.
C: GUI Related Beautify
Icons & Png's
D: Code Room
Snippets & SidePane

That way you have different ROOMS in which live the different compartments related to that room. You have the torpedo room with the torpedoes, the command center with the periscope etc., and it's easy to go step by step and Moi becomes individualized to the point that we aren't all forced to submit to become victims of one individual's rigormortis. Suddenly you have a very interesting path to customize your software and personalize it - which I think is a huge benefit / blessing to the consumer, because we're all individuals and have different taste and arrange our own desk per whim.

This way each cubicle isn't identical, nor dictated by a stiff unbending narrow philosophy - these options add doors & windows to a solitary confinement (in my opinion) however, my opinion has been quite unpopular among the inmates in this lunatic asylum - be that as it may.

I certainly will think long and hard before I go through the process of soaking up all the drivel on this forum seeking to download and figuring out which is the latest and greatest add-on and then pouring over the wasteland of notes around the code wondering where to - how to - add it - and then resize - beautify it - and hope it works!

One thing for sure - it's a great software - however - I think the forum is confusing and the icons & color theme are repugnant - and I love the lighting options, hot-keys, nodes & other options, not to mention the comfortable easy-on-your-eyes & elegant black & gray & white interface I have now - with all that miserable text labels replaced with pop-up tool-tips - right now I'm thrilled with Moi - the software.
Ced

Hi Ced, thanks for the ideas. One reason why I won't be doing that is as I've mentioned many times already I plan to eventually have a plug-in browser contained inside of Moi itself directly. Having them posted here on the forum is just a temporary thing, I do not want to structure the forum in a way that I already know will become obsolete at some point.

Also as I mentioned again previously there are already links in the wiki (http://moi3d.com/resources) to Petr's and Max's script pages which contain listings of the most frequently used scripts. That's where someone can go to right now to discover them. The resources page is one of the direct links on the main web site and it's also linked to in the help file table of contents.

Your situation is kind of unusual since most MoI users don't install any scripts and all, so it's just not something that is currently focused on as a high priority.

Since MoI is not currently focused on things that you yourself have as a high priority, it probably just isn't the right tool for you currently. I would recommend sticking with your plan you wrote about above about using other software that does meet your needs better right now.

- Michael