Please stop auto-closing the 'edit driver' popup when clicking next to it
When using drivers often it's getting frustrating pretty quickly that Blender closes the driver edit popup often while we're still editing, because it's made to close when we click outside of it. In contrary to other parts of the software (and other software).
For example when trying to copy a value from the UI somewhere outside the popup already it closes the window and we need to re-open it again. Which is very inconvenient and inefficient. But there are also other ways to accidentally close the window. And each time we need to reopen it again.
The popup to edit the driver also works differently compared to other popups which need to be closed using a button in the popop. So it's also inconsistant.
I think this inconvenience can easily be solved by never closing the popup window when clicking outside of it, and add a close-button so we can close it ourselves like we would expect and are familiar with elsewhere and in other software.
That would make the world of a difference!!
Thanks for considering!
8 Comments
This will soon become a user preference: projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/145523
Hmm, thoughtful! That's great news for Customization of Blender UI, and also for such Drivers-making Workflow, thank you for sharing and thanks everyone for the contributions to the developments!😸
There is a potential caveat though (in what regards that particular Drivers-making Workflow):
Do you think we'll be able to use the Copy Shortcut [ Ctrl+C ] while the cursor would be hovering on, say, a Value from a Slider Button located outside of the Driver popup window, while having this Close Menu on Leave Option Disabled, and without the Driver popup window closing?🫣
Even if that comes out not to be possible (in that upgrade), the whole feature can still be considered gigantic progress in quality of life in a lots of senses --which myself I'm unable to visualize yet, except for that Drivers-making Workflow. (As for any remaining caveats, we should be able to see the refreshed feedback from the Community later I guess in the near future).😹In whichever case, in my opinion, the "Close Menu on Leave" Option feature in development should represent AT LEAST, about a 150% (more than double!) improvement over what it was, for that particular Workflow.🙀
That should work, since copying works on hover, not on click, so it should be fine.
@pablovazquez That's amazing to see! This proposal will need a status update then: don't close menus after clicking checkboxes 😉
However, will this make sense in every scenario? I do see this useful when toggling checkboxes or for popup menus that are a bunch of options and inputs like the quick driver editor, but not when running operators. Examples:
Would it still close the menu after hitting that menu item or keep it open?
Also for addon making, will the API give control over this, i.e. would we be able to enforce one or either behavior?
Thanks Pablo. That's somewhat a step forward on one side. However, than it still closes when clicking outside of it which is not ideal when wanting to copy values for elsewhere in the UI. I guess the real question than is: why is this drivers dialog window built as a menu and not as a dialog with an OK and a cancel, like it's often in other software and in other places in Blender and what dialogs are normally for?
Wouldn't that make more sense for the vast amount of content it handles? Which goes a lot further than just a simple click as in a menu.
Also it than has as down side that it now affects the real menus behaviours, which work just fine as they do now and I don't think that keeping these open is an improvement.
It feels like a workaround which somewhat improves on one side, while making another part worse, only because something that normally works like a dialog is built as if it were a menu. So nice for people who want to keep menus open, but for the drivers dialog I still do hope that this could be reconsidered so we don't need to sacrifice the good working menus for this.
Thanks for considering!
The popup is designed as a quick temporary access with limited settings.
For anything else or more permanent GUI, you can already use the actual driver editor.
This is not about the settings it shows. And doing things quick is exactly what I want and it's got everything I ever needed for drivers. Except for the closing behaviour.
Sure but the drivers editor is as quick to access and already lets you chose when to close it.