Merge RealThunder transparancy stuff?

[pathfinder]

@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.

well, see my previous point:

[…]
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.
[…]

TL;DR: In my experience, transparency looks nice but is distracting and tiring when you work for hours and hours.

As with task boxes, really, most of the time I do some task.

I've thought about it some more and came to the conclusion that while consistency is nice, maybe there should be exceptions. For example, in Sketcher, the tree view is usually not as useful, because for most things to do there, you'll have to exit the sketch anyway. So having the task window overlaid doesn't take much away.

For other operations on the other hand, I tend to switch back and forth; mainly to toggle visibility on objects, to go into the property view (which the task view also covers) and so on. So there's an argument to be made that maybe, there should be two different options that are based on how likely it is that the treeview and/or property view are needed during a given task. It's probably not a popular position, but I put it out here anyway.

[MitjaN]

I am also switching between RT+VertUI and vannila FC+dark theme.

I quite like the auto hide feature, but the transparency is sometimes PITA. Especially in sketcher as sketcher tools don't work when cursor is outside of main canvas and due to transparency of the panels it takes a while to figure out why they don't work. So basically you have a big canvas for viewing and smaller canvas where you can actually work, but there visual cue, where you can work. It took me a while before I've figured this. A tiny vertical line marking where the transparent panel start would help a lot, to prevent user of trying to work there.

I don't know how the auto hide feature would work with non transparent panels. Might be a too big of a contrast change, which might annoy you so in the end it might not be so effective.

[paddle]

Is that so? I thought it was click through.
Maybe that can be fixed. Because I can see how annoying it would be.

[pathfinder]

Well for me it is, but it's kinda janky. For example, it doesn't show autoconstraints before clicking while being in the treeview section, so you just aim and hope for the best. Also, the autohide is somewhat misleading, because ever so often, you try to select something where the hidden panel is and then it pops up and you're like "oh, right, that thing is there" and then you have to move the model anyway.

What would be interesting to test is semitransparent windows, as in black with maybe 10-20% transparency as background and no click through. This way, you see more of the model and have a clue where the windows are.

[obelisk79]

I think this may be veering away from the original scope of the thread, but after a while of actual use, I actually found auto hide to be more annoying than helpful.

Perhaps allowing panels to be hidden/viewed like a sideways sliding drawer type effect would be more useful. A lot of times I don't need the information available in the task/property view until I specifically want it but once I do, I don't need it hiding whenever my mouse moves away.

Whatever happens in regards to both ideas, they need to be clearly optional and not default behavior.

[pathfinder]

I think this may be veering away from the original scope of the thread, but after a while of actual use, I actually found auto hide to be more annoying than helpful.

Perhaps allowing panels to be hidden/viewed like a sideways sliding drawer type effect would be more useful. A lot of times I don't need the information available in the task/property view until I specifically want it but once I do, I don't need it hiding whenever my mouse moves away.

Whatever happens in regards to both ideas, they need to be clearly optional and not default behavior.

Agreed on everything.

@MisterMaker did something that looks promising:

https://github.com/MisterMakerNL/Freeca ... cks_macros

[obelisk79]

I think his macros are interesting as well and while functional, they are rather inelegant in use. Better than nothing though and serves as a proof of concept.

[pathfinder]

how would you solve it? I agree thatthe macros are not optimal yet, but I can't say I have a much better idea.

[obelisk79]

how would you solve it? I agree thatthe macros are not optimal yet, but I can't say I have a much better idea.

I'm not on a computer with freecad or gimp so I had to reuse my mockup from another thread and do this in powerpoint, but essentially add a small widget to the resize bar (red arrow points to what I suggest) that allows clicking to slide the panel into the side of the screen, and clicking to expand it back out. If you look at the autohide behavior in LinkStage, it should function and look exactly like that, with the key differentiation being that you click to hide instead of moving the mouse in/out of the hot zone.

This is purely conceptual and I have no idea how simple/hard this would be to implement/adapt from @realthunder's current code, but I think it would be great as an additional option for screenspace management.

drawerslide.jpg (67.02 KiB) Viewed 2683 times

[sliptonic]

Please take the technical discussion to the issue. Forked technical discussions are bad