In Blender, we want to improve how the app communicates to the user, for things like warnings, info, reports and progress bars.
We already have several separate systems for this:
- We have a message popup in the status bar
- We also have a separate 'Info' editor
We can make this nicer by tying things together more. Here's how.
Info editor improvements
First, we need to add support for displaying messages, warnings and errors inside the Info Editor. We can do this by adding a switch at the top:
When set to Messages, you'll see a list of messages and reports over time.
Currently we have two categories of messages: errors and info, but we can add a third:
This makes it clearer to the user if a message is positive (success), neutral (information) or negative (error):
Each message type has an associated color. In the Info Editor Filter popover we could filter by type.
Readability
The current Info Editor is impossibly difficult to read, visually. Everything is unseparated with text-wrap. The contents just become a wall of text that is very hard to read:
D6491 already implements some large benefits to readability by separating each notification and adding a header icon:
We can do even more, by using progressive disclosure to let users open or close notifications, like so:
Status Bar
We can make a few improvements to the Status Bar also:
Click on message to open Info Editor window
By clicking on the message or warning, you could be taken to the Info Editor. Simplest way is to spawn it as a new window.
Persistent error symbol
If an error is unresolved, we can keep an error symbol in the Status Bar, so that the user knows the error still lingers.
Remove file info from Status Bar
Currently there isn't much space to display full info messages and warnings in the Status Bar, because the file info is in the way.
We have received many requests to move the file info elsewhere:
In a vertical list, there would be a lot more space to communicate this kind of information, and we could add a lot more. This could be moved to the viewport, or in a Stats panel in the Scene Properties, for example.
With this out of the way, we have a lot more room for nicer messages and warnings.
