Tabs are fine
Supposing that a drag and drop option will come.
Familiarity because it will be like most of the OS browsers. (somehow)
As I said, these new builds should create new (2.69b or 2.70 something) preference folder.
Else, I’m pretty sure, soon we’ll be in trouble. (already made a backup of 2.69 prefs etc folder)
The toolbar tabs have been made more readable for those who haven’t noticed yet.
http://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2014-January/061418.html
So it’s not like they dumped tabs onto the UI with the intent to immediately abandon them, they’re aware of the readability issues and they’re still working on them.
It’s too bad that the motion trails are still too slow with armatures though. Perhaps this was added in light of the recent threaded depsgraph improvements? I’d love some more info on this since it’s immensely helpful for animating smooth movement arcs.
Didnt like vertical tabs when using Modo , dont like them on Blender. Vertical stacking of text is not a user-friendly design no matter where it is used.
Some everyday programs we use have decent solutions i think.The first one is Windows Object/Executable properties tabs.When you right click an executable and select properties a group of horizontal tabs appear. It not the most elegant design but it works and its readable. The second is “Google Chrome” bookmarks bar. When a page is bookmarked it is added to this thin bar just under the main address bar and it also has icons. A 1920x1080 resoulution can have around 15-18 bookmarks depending on the bookmarks name length.
Anyway, I agree with Atom.
Vertical tabs are not great but horizontal tabs with what - a dropdown panel? a ribbon? - truly are nonfunctional in a graphics program where they eat into the vertical space. No big deal for a web page, scrolling is expected, no need to see the whole page at one time.Not so in graphics the whole scene or image area is often looked at so narrowing vertically means that large amounts of space to the side are wasted. Unless you are making long horizontal ribbon shaped scenes and images. Even in the new office the ribbon is in the wrong place. To see my whole page I have to zoom out so far I can’t read the text anymore. Truly backwards - let’s not imitate that.
Lets not forget that Tool Shelf and Properties menu has shortcuts which allow them to be opened or closed, which can be applied to the thin ribbon since it is harboring the elements of tool shelf. Also there is the overlay draw method which allows the 3D view to be bigger. Also if the user is using 2 monitors the “Duplicate area to new window” feature will allow the 3d view to be drawn on a separate window on a single blender instance. Which can be placed on monitor 1 and the the other menus on a second window placed at monitor 2.Thus on a separated 3d view the work area will be much greater. And if the user toggles fullscreen view ( alt+f11 ) you will gain at least 20-30 pixels.
Also the user can switch to full 3d working space with a shortcut (shift + space or ctrl + up arrow) . Which hides all open menus automatically except for “Tool Shelf” and “Properties menu”.
So a 10 or 20 pixel loss on vertical screen space is already compensated by the awesome blender UI features already present.
Let’s also not forget that every tool in the toolshelf already had a shortcut.
just my 2 cents.
Also, a 2 monitor workflow is hindered greatly by the need to click into each window in order to activate it. Certainly doesn’t make it feel sleek and smooth.
I love the vertical tabs. Honestly readability isn’t a huge deal. Once you’ve read them and clicked on them once or twice you know what they are.
One thing that may be helpful is to have color coding (this would be helpful for the actual buttons too). Having the tabs on the inside near the viewport like in Modo could help as well (imo the ui team should be looking at Modo if they haven’t already. The Lynda intro is pretty good for a crashcourse). Getting rid of any scroll bar appearing would also be nice to keep things visually consistent. Doing Zbrush like scrolling where you drag the panel rather than a bar would prevent that interference.
Why stop at vertical?
Cracked me up… now delete it before you give anyone any ideas!
Doing Zbrush like scrolling where you drag the panel rather than a bar would prevent that interference
Indeed. And, zbrush also uses horizontal TABS (these vertical panels on the right are basically tabs), anyway a closer to the blender style. But you know, zbrush UI hasn’t much reputation. (I may have a little different approach on this matter)
I solved the readability issue of the tabs by turning my monitor 90 degrees clockwise…only problem with that is, now I can’t read anything else…
Would anyone think that stacking the letters upright would be a good idea, as in, you have a vertical format?
When you look at the fact that a lot of real world businesses do it (in English), it may very well make things more readable even if it’s not a real common practice in application design (providing that it has good vertical alignment). As a bonus, the system that truncates names when there’s not enough space can be applied as well.
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Not me Ace 
After playing with them all day today, I’m sure if/when we can customize the number of tabs, their names, and what goes in them, they will be pretty cool to have. Reading them isn’t bothering me at all.
But vertical text…http://i669.photobucket.com/albums/vv55/paruwi6172/spamCrazy/ewwwww.gif
@Ace
What will happen in a few years? When more tabs will be added? Scrolling for tabs?
I can understand such solutions for something out of the box. Blender will never be such a product.
BTW, no, I don’t like upright letters.
If it means reintroducing a little bit of scrolling for a lot more readability and the preservation of vertical space, why not?
The only low-hanging idea left meanwhile would be to just make the tabs square and replace the letters with icons, but that might introduce a whole new challenge in terms of creating images with meaning so as to allow one to instantly remember which image to click to go to which tool.
Let me remind you boys and girls that every major 3d application uses tabs, including Blender (prior to these vertical tabs). They are used for a reason, because they work well. If you wish to say you know more about good UI design than all the other UI designers out there working on the leading software of today, then just say so.
That said, blender uses the same tab approach in both the settings window and even with the properties editor. Its a bit hypocritical to whine about tabs when they have already been a part of Blender for quite some time, that approach wasnt fully applied across the UI in a consistent fashion. Now its going to be.
Learn to adapt, theres no other 3d application you will probably like if you find Blender’s current development to concern you.
You are joking Ace, right?
A little bit of scrolling?
@saint
It is not the tabs, these are fine.
It is this vertical unfortunate solution.
Because we can’t design tabs buttons. No talent? Not that difficult.
You know Saint how panels-tabs work in zbrush (right column).
Something like this.
After all this solution comes from the OS browsers and it is familiar.
I think by now, you should realize that I’m just tossing around ideas here, I really do not have any sort of role in the UI development team, all I can do is report the news.
Still, I wonder if there should be a universal role of icons in Blender in that they denote a point of access to entire groups of properties and tools, the tools and properties would still be in text of course, but at least we’d have some new rules to use to help with consistency.
Well icons are good too, but thats out of the question at the moment until a solution can be found which allow for actually adding icons. For tabs to work as an obvious visual indicator, they need to actually look like tabs in some way (visual metaphor), which is why they opted for the shape (though I did push for more boxy looking styles). Vertical tabs on their own, whether with text or icons work fine though. As for zbrush’s panel tabs, I think the key difference is that zbrush is not only based around a tablet and had expected type of control (use of pen), but that its far more streamlined for one particular area of the 3d workflow. It has a unified UI with just one menu and one viewport. Even then, applications like Mudbox are praised for its intuitive and easy to use interface where as zbrush gets complaints about its UI more often than naught.
Because of blender’s design, its broken up into many windows with their own individual UIs and viewports/graphs and toggles. Thus you end up with something far more cluttered and highly unorganized. Its come to the point where not everything can be seen on the screen at any one point in time. Tabs whether vertical or horizontal consolidate and organize that clutter. Horizontal space is more valuable than vertical space, so vertical space is used instead. I believe it works very well once you get used to it. Its fairly standard at this point.
