Just a quick text change would help I think. the inputs labeled Background and Foreground and the slider labeled Opacity.
Having said that I have been using the mix shaders and the alpha over shaders a bit so I have gotten used to the fact that the background is the top input.
Having different labels would have instantly told me what was going on though and sped things up.
Just my 2 centavos.
What about just labeling the sockets like this?
I’m many times weirded out in the compositor, that the bottom socket affects over the first socket - would make more sense that the first socket is over the bottom one. If the sockets are labeled 0 and 1, at least you could justify it by saying that 1 is over 0 
And the 0 and 1 then also relates to the factor.
They are labelled like that in python, i think they arent labelled like that to be artist friendly? cause who counts from 0? apart from computers 
Yeah, this thread really shows how artist friendly it is currently I know you’re probably joking, but 1) there’s a couple of generations already who gets the counting from 0 thing, computers being part of modern life and all, and 2) who decides to learn compositing/shaders, having to grasp concepts like premultiplication and lightpaths, and still gets freaked out by the 0/1 thing? CG is inherently a technical discipline, no matter how creative the outcome is…
Coherent material panel, anyone?
I can’t believe this thread made it to 2 pages. If you can’t remember which is which after using blender for a while, you have bigger problems than the nodes not being labeled.
you live in spain/england, so your writting logic would be left to right and top to bottom, wich is the most natural way, so this works the same way
Bingo. If this causes problems, the mind boggles considering the difficulties those people must experience remembering things that are actually difficult.
Is this really a problem? Can’t you just follow an initial tutorial on how to use them and then learn how it works, or right click the thing and get the wiki menu explanation? UI is such a bugger to get into, and this might seem like it is easy to fix and end up being a piece of yarn at the bottom of the sweater that unravels the whole thing.
Let’s not confuse the man any more like I and others have pointed out mix nodes and textures layer stacks etc in blender are read bottom to top NOT top to bottom. The inverse of most layer stacks in most programs out there why this is so I don’t know. Bottom to Top. Just remember background at the top and all should be fine.
Until you try to put other nodes together with that. Has anyone here used anything other than Cycles? I’m doubting it
I don’t mess with nodes much, but the texture stack being inverted is really awkward when dealing with multiple textures.
Indeed it is
I am not sure I fully understand what you are saying? But how you read nodes that have some kind of opacity mixing or blending mode has always been background layer at the top and active layer, the layer whose opacity you are controlling, at the bottom to keep the convention that exists with the texture stack.
I have used nodes every time I have opened blender (Multiple timkes a day nodes are my life xD) And I still havnt figured it out maybe its because im retarded lol
Left to right, top to bottom just like you read this posting - that is why it is organized that way. It is consistent with the rest of Blender, regardless of what is used outside of Blender. We aren’t talking now about how a node should be labeled but rather why Blender uses the order it does, and I imagine it is the same as when you write code blocks, each addition comes below. Your modifier stack does the same order, but you have no problem understanding what happens with the order after a few tries at reordering those modifiers, right? Same with nodes. The same Texture Stack order that is in Blender Internal Materials is also the same order and progression you see in Cycles nodes - but most people balk at it because it is just different.
Nodes themselves are liberating because you can feed multiple inputs from one output, and reorder with switches and add textures in ways not possible in Internal. If we really want to pursue changing the order they stack in, then we shift paradigm across the board and rewrite the program. I think in my own opinion that we come from a false sense of order because of exposure to programs like Photoshop that ordered the layers as if they were physical sheets of acetate that you woudl draw on for animation, and we got used to it. I have no problem working in both now after spending all this time digging into why the program ticks like it does.
Try to place yourself in the shoes of people unfamiliar with Blender. Each little piece of UI that you trip over adds to the general feeling of Blender’s inaccessibility.
I don’t know that it was defined by Photoshop so much as just logic and reality. In the physical world to overlap something, you place it on the top of the stack. In Blender to overlap, you place it underneath. It’s contrary to the point the English words are backward.
The modifier stack doesn’t trip me up though. I don’t use the same mental metaphor for it I guess. I think of it more as a set of rules applied to an object. More like an assembly line I guess. So the order of it makes sense in that context.
Nodes are not layers. They’re two completely different material paradigms.
Maybe so, but my point of view is based on me being a new user 11 years ago and learning how they worked, how they all work. I am powerless to change it, but capable of understanding it regardless of how it came to be. Others might be able to change it - I just am trying to illustrate how I think they work and why they are as they are.
And I think in my opinion that the nodes are extensions of layers, and that they give a more physical view of what the layers are doing - especially when compared to layer groups and sub groups in PS or Photoline.
I’m not trying to argue, but I guess I am just struggling to make some intelligent point that is escaping me…
