Merge RealThunder transparancy stuff?

[paddle]

If Realthunder is not available I can try to find and cherry pick his commits for this. Depending on his commits it might be easy or dauntingly difficult.

[pathfinder]

I can't see any downsides. Can you? What are you guys opinion on this?

If I'm not mistaken, there's a transparent treeview you can get through the addon manager; but maybe I'm mixing things up.

I work on both RTs branch and vanilla FC regularly and my RT branch uses VertUI, so transparent treeview and all the bells and whistles. For vanilla FC, it's a dark theme with dark background, so nothing fancy

It's kind of a weird thing. The more modern look of VertUI made me excited to spend time using the program and made me want to invest more time into learning FC at the time, so it was definitely a good thing. But now, after working on both for quite some time, I tend to prefer the UI of regular FC more (except for some details like treeview and task window being in the same spot).

It's hard to put into words why exactly that is, but I think it has to do with compartmentalization, as in what you expect to be where and what it does to your attention when things change constantly. With transparency, everything is potentially dynamic. And while rationally, it shouldn't make much of a difference, because things don't change positions, when actually working with it, it kind of does, probably because the backgrounds of treeview and potentially other functions are essentially dynamic and that kind of triggers some peripheral view instinct that tells you something unexpected is going on, if that makes sense? The closest thing I can think of in regular FC is the report view popping off with yet another error message that you decided to ignore ages ago because it's actually not a big deal or a false-positive anyway, but it still makes your eyes twitch in that direction for a second.

Now, this is my personal experience. I can't exactly claim to be representative for anything. But maybe there's something in there, and if I were to interpret this experience and tried to take conclusions from it, I'd say this:


A modern looking UI helps get new users excited to use the program.

It is okay if small concessions are made against optimal usability; once they get more proficient with the program, users will eventually adjust their UI as they see fit (Note that I do NOT mean unintuitive positions of icons and stuff for this, but more stuff like transparency).

Once you've entered the "power-user"-phase, fancy UI gimmicks play less of a role and an effective, non-straining UI becomes more important. <-- This also contains the hint that maybe, experienced users deciding what the default UI of FC should look like might benefit greatly from getting some outside opinions (i.e. ask non-FC users "would you want to use this program based on this UI?").


Not sure how helpful this is overall.

[Jolbas]

I tend to prefer the UI of regular FC more (except for some details like treeview and task window being in the same spot).

Choose "TreeView and PropertyView" in "Tree view mode" in Preferences->General and restart FreeCAD to separate them.

[sliptonic]

I appreciate the topic to get done consensus around the issue. It sounds like there is that.

Please create a problem report in the tracker and move the technical discussion there.

[pathfinder]

I tend to prefer the UI of regular FC more (except for some details like treeview and task window being in the same spot).

Choose "TreeView and PropertyView" in "Tree view mode" in Preferences->General and restart FreeCAD to separate them.

Doesn't work for me. When I do that, I only have the task panel, but neither treeview nor property view. Likely a configuration issue on my end.

That being said, I'm not a big fan of either approach. Having both separated and always present takes up a huge chunk of the screen and most of the time, you don't need both. I'm not totally sure how to square that circle, though. I like the idea of having collapsible windows with tabs that you can hover over to expand the window, but maybe in practice, it'll turn out to be annoying as well.

[paddle]

I appreciate the topic to get done consensus around the issue. It sounds like there is that.

Please create a problem report in the tracker and move the technical discussion there.

I prefer to ask before doing something wrong because I'm a bit confused. Should I use the github 'issue' feature ? Or do you mean something different? I seem to recall there's something else where people report bugs but I never used it and can't recall. If you meant to use this other thing, can you please point me ? If it's github I know how to do it.

@pathfinder I think this is why transparency is nice, because even with the tree and task separated, you still have a lot of 3D view. I don't think there are so many task boxes open all the time, so it wouldn't take so much space. Besides taskboxes are mostly meant to appear when you actually need them.

[onekk]

...

See maybe:

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=73127

I admit it is not very easy to follow.

Regards

Carlo D.

[paddle]

Ok so I opened on github :
https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/issues/7756

[sliptonic]

I prefer to ask before doing something wrong because I'm a bit confused. Should I use the github 'issue' feature ? Or do you mean something different?

No problem. We're adapting our process even now so we're all learning.

The issue you created is a good start. Issues can be edited and improved and they should be.
In this case I would encourage you to write it in terms of a problem to be solved instead of an idea. When people discuss problems, the conversation tends to converge on solutions and workarounds. People ask more "why" questions that help clarify the use cases.

"Ideas", on the other hand, tend to grow over time as people expand them, add features, and argue over details.

The value of an idea is sometimes hard to nail down. Its self-apparent with a problem.
It might seem like a trifling detail but it makes a difference.

[obelisk79]

I have gone in and added a comment to the issue on github that I think is more in line with the new contribution process. Feedback welcome so I can try to better contribute in what little ways possible.