Provide an option to revert the UI ordering changes made in 4.0
When I updated to Blender 4.2 after finishing a project I very quickly noticed that the UI order had been flipped based on the way I use the software, like many other UI changes applied to Blender throughout recent updates I went searching for an option to revert this change (such as the option to access pre 2.8 keybrinds right out of the box).
Upon looking further into this I noticed that this directional feed feature had been removed as it was "too confusing" for users (listed under refrence #109798). Whilst I do understand this from a designer choice and that for some people it may be easier to work with that way, the straight up removal of this feature is quite annoying to deal with. As someone who prefers the prior UI choice this change has interrupted my workflow on multiple occasions where I will misclick "particle edit" instead of my intended selection of "object mode" for example as my brain worked on associating the order of the menu with how close the selection was to the source of the drop out menu.
An option in the user prefrences to add this feature back in a future update would be greatly appreciated!
4 Comments
The main issue with this feature is that it only worked on some menus, not all of them, leading to unpredictable behavior and inconsistency.
It's always been like this so us Blender users got used it and had the muscle memory to remember which menus behave this way. I was also mixed about this at first, having used Blender for over two decades. But I believe that in the long run this was a good change, for new users and veterans too.
I suspect that keeping two possible displays as an option would multiply maintenance work in some way on the devs' side?
After version 4, the entire UI changes, still preventing me from upgrading to a newer version. I am unwilling to upgrade from 3.6 because I cannot afford to risk the unpredictable usability of my software in the middle of production. There are so many tiny, annoying UI adjustments, (like the modifiers hidden behind 3 clicks and a search bar. Who came up with this idea?)
When we decided on changing to this consistent menu direction we did so knowing that we (unfortunately) could not provide a user option to give the prior behavior even if we wanted to.
This is because this order flipping only happened on some menus of some types in one odd circumstance. We really couldn't add a preference to "reverse the order of some menus when they open upward instead of downward" as that would only lead to confusion since we couldn't really explain which of the menus or why.