New Vertical Tabs Are Hard To Read

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Icons likely will play a larger role in future developments (including with vertical tabs). However, good icon creation in a skill of it’s own that frankly very few people are good at. Of course anyone is welcome to try their hand at it, but to truly use icons in place of text the icons must be quite good. And so these icons take time. At the current time we don’t have many extra icons available to use that are both specific enough to our needs and not already used elsewhere in Blender for different things. Multiple uses of the same icon is already a problem in other parts of Blender, and so I’d really rather not further that problem.

All of that said, I do hope we can find a way to involve a talented icon designer to work on some new areas.

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As far i can see, there are 2 problems with the tab approach as of now:
One: Text Readability - The text is practically illegible when you are not close enough to the monitor (Read as: “I find them illegible on my calibrated monitor”)
Two: Text direction - Normally, the human brain is used since childhood to read from left to right (except some countries, mostly middle east and some eastern countries i think), and Up to Down (no exception here i can think of). The Problem here is that Tabs force inverse reading, from bottom to up, and that’s inevitably means head tilling. That’s why most software when use vertical tabs and text, they tend to be located at the RIGHT of the toolbar, with text rotated 90 degrees clockwise, and when not, the contrast between text and background is increased, and the font selected tends to be different from the horizontal text used. This is more common on web pages.

IMHO, if the designer insist with the “from down to up” text readability, at least should make way greater contrast between text and background. The more, the better. And not. Emboss text doesn’t help: makes things worse.

Two cents thrown again.

J.

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No just no, I’m taking degree for graphic design at college and the number one rule of on the first day of typography class was: “Never Ever Stack Letters Vertically !!”
This is the worst readability you can have for text arrangement.
Just saying…

Edit: the way the dev’s have the text arranged for tabs now works okay typographically…not the best but not sure what else they could do.

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+1 for vertical stacking.
+1000,000 for breaking design school rules.:evilgrin:

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the letters are horizontal but the words are vertical

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Interestingly, I just recently came upon a similar design issue…

Text aligned vertically, IMHO should be aligned like vertical words in a crossword puzzle, otherwise the user has to either rotate their head sideways or mentally rotate the image in their head, in order to read it, which creates an inconvenience and/or inconsistency. You could say the user will eventually get used to it like the infamous default RMB click (but that’s more muscle memory/coordination and thus actually easier to adapt).

My subjective experience: I still turn my head sideways when looking for a book at the library, initially anyways :stuck_out_tongue:

One example is how some Eastern languages are read vertically. Even when they adopt a Western orientation, they don’t rotate the text sideways. So vice versa, going from horizontal to vertical, it doesn’t seem to make sense to rotate the text in a similar fashion either.

Yeah, it will take up a little more space vertically but that’s a job for panning and/or scroll bars which are already second-nature (intuitive) than reading text sideways.

I should consult with my UI books…there are probably studies on this also.

Ofc, the simple solution is to add an option to change the text orientation. And colored tabs would be really useful, since no text need be read once familiarized.

PS:

http://chil.rice.edu/research/pdf/byrne2002hfes.pdf
Conclusion: The current orientation (non crossword) should be faster, though 90 degrees to the right instead of the left, would be slightly faster, possibly bc we read top to bottom. My intuition is wrong, hehe.

Culture, age, capitalization and spacing seem to be important factors also.

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double post

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To the OP you are correct vertical tabs are a bit harder to read but it’s an acceptable level of hardness IMO because of the benefits it brings in improving the layout and organisation of the tool bar. If you are grading hardness from 1 to 10 I would say it’s a 1 of not 0.5. It’s small stuff, so quiet sweating the small stuff.

P.S I have seen this in a few post but what is with this rotating you head nonsense to read vertically aligned text. do you people have such bad spatial reasoning I’m looking at a stack of books at the moment some of the titles go up down and others down up and I can read them with out any head tilting. Tilting you head doesn’t alter your sense of up and down or alter the orientation of the letters so I call BS on the tilt head stuff. Tilt your head and vertically aligned is still vertically aligned all tilting your head does is give you a stiff neck.

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@santhaven @all
When I said horizontal TABs, I had this in mind.
Click on one, it opens, click on another, the first closes, click+shift you have two opened (and of course you start scrolling but it is expected and optional. Drag and drop on these tabs (because tabs they are). What do you say?
I’m not good on making such things, I’m pretty sure that you can make better looking-button TABs.
Just my idea. Adopting the OS browsers and or ZBrush (though in zb it is a lot more confusing)
Now we can add more tabs in the future, I also find it a little closer to the blender style.

UI_TABS_hor.jpg671×842 49.5 KB

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I know it’s not worth much, since it’s only my $0.02…

At first I thought this thread was just another gripe session about personal preferences (sorry, Atom ;)). But I just updated to the latest version with Git, and I gotta say I very much agree with him.

They’re very hard to read. And since each tab includes all of the addon-specific subpanels that appear in the UI panel when you enable other addons (say, Sculpt Tools, Hair Lab, etc.), it doesn’t really feel like it’s saving any space. It still feels cluttered, since those tabs are always visible.

+100 for tabs, but I like michalis’ mockup much better than the current design iteration. That’s what I initially thought a tabs implementation would look like, personally (akin to tabs in Maya / 3DS Max).

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I find it also hard to read, sorry. But no offense, i have completely overseen this over the weeks, otherwise i had take part in the discussions… But no problem im using shortcuts…

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If they’re bundled with the release, they won’t be. They just haven’t been updated yet… partially because the official categories (and the guideline for them) hasn’t been finalized yet.

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hopefully the new Ui doesnt break some addons!?

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Enough addons get broken and forgotten on their own without UI changes, so I wouldnt stress it.

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I agree that what you draw is closer to the blender style. However, it already has the problem in it that if one particular tab has a lot of items in it, it will push the other tabs out of the bottom of the screen. Second, the problem is that it means the tabs are not on a predictable place; the location where you find the tab depends on which tab is currently open. That is a bad thing, as you will normally after a while not even look where you are clicking.

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Looking at the michalis’ mockup, I must say it has a lot of sense, easy and congruous with the blender GUI.

paolo

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It won’t break any addons. It doesn’t add any new requirements to addons. Addons that don’t update simply won’t be added to a specific tab, instead they’ll show in all tabs.

How is this any different than the existing Panels, which can be opened and closed? You can already auto-close other panels when opening one by CTRL+LMB.

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@PhysicsGuy
I agree there may be some cons
Most of them will come from a possibly wrong grouping. (too many items)
Same could happen with the vertical tabs. Tabs are not a solution against such UI issues.
Imagine though, everytime you start blender, all these tabs will be closed and only the one you click will open.
Supposing we grouped reasonably, scrolling will not happen. Of course, if someone ants to drag and drop, group differently, it is optional.

My concern with the existing today tabs is what gonna happen if more tabs added there.
To use icons may sound nice, but supposing I like to create my own group-tab, then what? do I have to create an icon then?
I doubt if these icons will mean anything, they will be small and will say nothing to new comers.

Anyway, you all made your decisions, you didn’t pay much attention to what active blender users saying.
After a period of experimentation you’ll see how unfortunate solution is.
Supposing that we’ll have vertical tabs all around, right?
Not only on the T panel, right?
Supposing you have checked vertical tabs on the N panel too, on the properties window, right?
There will be a unified TABs based blender UI, right?

So many questions, just to be sure.

@Jonathan
You don’t read carefully, sorry for my english
The difference is this:

  1. different buttons (I’m not good on designing these, you can do much better)
  2. The most important. These tabs will be closed and only one at a time can be opened (like the vertical tabs). Clicking on another tab, the first closes automatically.
    Of course, optionally, someone can shift click and have two tabs opened, leading to scrolling again, as blender 2.69 is, but, it is optional.
  3. It can be used under all blender windows, under properties, evrywhere.

About ctrl+LMB: not the best shortcut, but this is how I handle blender and I’m happy.
I doubt if all these newcomers, all these who like to see a maya or 3dmax like blender, they are aware of the existing blender UI.
Honestly, SaintHaven, did you know this shortcut?
@Jonathan,
they should open one at a time, and shift click to open two of them. The ctrl+LMB is not familiar and not friendly to OS UIs.
ctrl+LMB is in use for other things and basically it is an alternative of the RMB.

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sorry for offtop: Thank you Andrew Price, he managed that caused quarrel between all with all…

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No he didnt. This conflict of sentiment over function has existed long before andrew price added his 2 cents. 2.7+ was supposed to bring back the UI team and improvements, which unfortunately went MIA after the whole 2.5 change.