Perhaps you could just force them to do that popup menu thing and completely avoid the mouse position feature.
I like the idea of pages. Your mockups are really clear.
On the wiki I made a similar proposal to change last operator region into one page.
But I don’t agree with the idea to put these pages in the same sidebar :
Tools and actions
Previous Operator Settings & Undo History
Nobody clicks on a tool button and does not change settings in Last Operator panel after.
IMHO, while working, these two pages must be shown at same time.
I have difficulties to understand how people can appreciate to have both in same sidebar as it is actually.
Maybe their whole workflow is limited to operators that have 3 or 4 settings.
But if you are using Add addons like Extra Objects, Ivy Gen, Sapling, Bolt Factory, etc… or want to change proportionnal editing tools, it is a nigthmare to constantly have to hide tool buttons/tools settings.
Tabs reduced tool buttons scrolling. But problem is still there. Add Primitive panel should be splitted.
Your proposal have the same kind of problem. Everybody use tool buttons, now. Because of the incredible amount tools offered by blender, you cannot have a shortcut for everyone. Nobody really recodes UI; each time, he discovers a new pratical addon. So, you have to switch to tool buttons/tool settings.
In your proposal, you have to click very often to display the needed page.
For my use, I would prefer:
Left Sidebar :
Page #1 -Tools and actions
Page #2 - Item/Selection properties
Right Sidebar
Page #1 - Previous Operator Settings & Undo History
Page #2 - View/shading option
Page #3 - Configuration of editor
Probably, everyone would have its own preferences.
So, ideally, pages should be customizable or draggable. A way for user to tell to Blender this page goes to right sidebar and this one to left sidebar.
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It doesn’t really break anything as far as I can see but a few points that seem weird -
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Does no one use the continuous grab feature of the cursor??? This proposal brings up the same complaint that I hear a lot from people who do not have this enabled in the prefs, and it attempts to solve the same problem (that the cursor is not located in a convenient place when calling a command) that the single checkbox in prefs has fixed for a long time now.
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Drag and drop is not only weird but negates the Blender behavior that the 3Dcursor is the location for new objects when created, aligned to world or view, and replaces this with dropping them in an completely unpredictable location as regards depth, or is it going to be in front of the frontmost object or…? Not appealing at all for anything except the node editor - oh wait, that’s the one editor it does that in already.
During working you should not even need the right sidebar at all, except the odd time the editor needs to be configured differently.
Unless you are weighting vertices, or animating rigs that have properties, or setting keyframes, or creating custom orientations… this is not a criticism of your proposal, since you are not suggesting that the right sidebar be done away with, but it does seem that a lot of these UI proposals think of the 3Dview as the ‘Modeling’ window only…
I DO understand that your object properties are supposed to be in the left sidebar. That means that you can’t use the editing tools and see the object or element’s location rotation etc. update in real time as you drag or transform etc. Still i’m sure you can pin those panels open in the left sidebar - but then you’re going to run out of room…
4.I really really don’t want to switch from the tools to the last operation panel back to the tool panel every time I use it! As it is now the last operation panel either goes away (F6 way) or sits at the bottom (not very useful toolshelf scrolling way). But to have it obscure the tools until I click a tab… that looks like a real timewaster.
I see that it’s a very popular proposal though so congratulations on coming up with a winner!
Did you guys completely miss the “popout configurator” for the tools?
What I have there is “Select tool, choose configuration, confirm, done”
This complete bypasses the stupid broken workflow of “do action wrongly, then fix it somewhere else”
The history page is there for people who use shortcuts, or need to change something they did accidentally wrong.
Things like tree generators who have many parameters and require many adjustments should be looked at differently, they are not standard tools.
Continuous grab is great but does not fix the problem, specifically the scale tool
This is a fair complaint.
You could move this object-properties page to the right sidebar, just so long as it has it’s own space (not mixed in with view settings). All that would be lost is that clarity of left=tools/object right=editor but that is not a big deal.
I knew 2.4X. I am used to think about what I would do before doing it.
I am still doing that with Loop Tools addon.
But I appreciate 2.5x changes, too.
I think it is usefull for other use cases when you are experimenting.
Using Last Operator panel does not mean that you did something wrong.
Sometimes, you want to tweak settings to test different ideas.
The idea of popup that is hiding effect of an operator in 3DView when you are using a slider to do fine tune does not only concern people using shortcuts.
And I already wrote it ; tools are too numerous.
Nobody can only use shortcuts for everything.
Ignoring tools page is not possible except if pie menus have been hardly used and customized.
It is only the case of people who already know blender tools. But it would make the UI really unfriendly for new incomers.
It is not a valid argument.
Extra Objects, Ivy Gen, Sapling, Bolt Factory are bundled in official build releases.They are commonly used.
You can not ignore them in a UI proposal.
But even standard basic transform tools have lots of settings. How many people don’t know that they can tweak orientation or propotionnal editing settings for translate/rotate/scale in last operator panel because these settings are hidden in current UI ?
The current system of relying on the “previous operator settings” to configure a tool like generate tree is just stupid and broken. As soon as you move the tree or touch another object you cannot change anything anymore… hardly ideal
Ideally implement some proper dynamic/parametric/generated object system into Blender. Or be part of a modifier (python script modifier???).
If we can’t drop the reliance on this particular “permanent in your face overlapping previous operator settings” to configure everything post-mortem the toolbar is always going to be screwed.
Currently the scripts you list don’t even have a button in the toolbar, but if they did they would have that side arrow thing.
What is wrong with putting the options in the popup type menu show. Don’t like the way it comes out to the side and blocks the screen, OK well why not have the options displayed vertically in the toolbar when toggled, same thing just a different display. That’s easy.
Nothing is lost from what you have currently, in-fact it is basically the same thing except that this popup is temporary and only when you need it, not sit there being unused and covering up half the tools.
Let me draw it:
I think that keeping the object properties on the right as DruBan says is also a good idea so we can monitor the properties while using the tools. But please, get it separate from the viewport options:
What I dislike the most is simply the need to click to have to set settings and then the need to click to confirm.
I don’t want to redo 2.5x UI’s debate.
IMHO, it slows down workflow. I use shortcuts for most of the tools.
But I still need toolbar for the ones that have no shortcuts or the buttons from addons like cell fracture.
I don’t like to rebuild my UI at every new step of a creation process. The confirmation of use of an operator or an addon is not the end of my work.
So I want to progress smoothly, I 'd rather to permanently see buttons and settings.
I am not asking for a complete redesign of all existing tools to have a perfect blender that supports parametric objects in 4 years or one decade.
I am just suggesting to add to your proposal the addition of user preferences for pages positions to allow me to put tools in one bar and settings in the other one.
Actually, if we dislike actual tabs organization, we can suppress it or change it.
Your proposal is good and I would like to see it integrated quickly (in less than 4 months).
I am just telling that it should be little bit customizable as tabs to satisfy every user.
Nice images!
I don’t quite understand, do you want to have instant access to change setting after you confirmed? I can’t understand why you would confirm and then think immediately it needs to be changed again (why confirm?)?
It’s not like you can change your “add bolt” settings after you have moved on to editing another object in current Blender anyhow.
Just to be clear, it is meant to remain interactive, as seen in the animations the object is added before confirmation. Confirmation here is just saying “go away options I’m finished with you and want to use another tool”. I also like to give a cancel button - putting confirmation alongside a cancel button is natural, you could also use enter key or click out to confirm.
If people REALLY hate confirmation button that options popup could be closed when mouse-away (like the f6 panel) but I think the area is too small for that, and the having the confirm/cancel button more logical in this area.
.gif’s are awesome 
…double post
I did not understand that it would remain interactive.
But my problem is elsewhere.
Some tools are available by shortcuts and in this case, I prefer to use last operator panels when they have no modal mode and extra shortcuts to tweak settings.
Some tools are not available by shortcuts and in this case, I will use your tool buttons.
So if I want to be fast and do a succession of actions using tools from keymaps and tools from buttons without loosing time to change UI; I have to display both.
Now that’s a great proposal!
Please make sure to also post it on the developer site.
Yeah, if you are going to do hotkey-buttons-hotkey-buttons-hotkey-buttons. You are going to need to change tabs.
In my experience I do not typically do operations like that, it’s more grouped into periods of using many many hotkeys and then a few tool buttons (who have obscure/no hotkeys), then back the hotkeys.
What sort of tools are you using when rapidly going between hotkeys+adjustment to using toolbar buttons?
I am used to blender shortcuts. So I use them most of the time.
But for new recent tools or add ons, I use buttons.
For instance, while modeling, it is a common case to extrude/loopcut and slide/bevel shortcuts after pushing Bisect or Knife Project button.
After several Ctrl R of loopcut and slide, I will use buttons of Loop Tools addon.
After adding/rotating circles, I will use sketching sessions option of grease pencil and buttons of BSurfaces addon.
I also often press Smooth/Flat buttons after joining mesh and recalculate normals.
When I am working with curves, I do almost everything using shortcuts except for changing Spline Type.
Creating an armature is like modeling, but if I want to encode it as metarig; I will use rigify buttons.
Although I mostly use shortcuts (Ctrl L, Shift L etc…) or manipulator to pose a character; there a lot of animations tools that require use of buttons motion path buttons, bake action button, AnimAll addon, rigid body buttons.
And it is not rare to jump into edit mode to correct collision shape of a rigid body or to modify a shape key of a character.