@Sean - The test program you describe would tell us about new-user usability, but would not tell us about expert usability. While I would value these results, I suspect they would not be very convincing to existing users. Expert/everyday data can be gathered by putting usage-tracking/timing directly into the application. Then we can visualize frequency/timing of use over any users submitting usage data. This might be worth doing, as it's generally just small hooks inside some core menu code. However, to learn much about comparative designs, you then need to do A/B testing, where different users get different UIs (randomly or selectively). Our userbase is a bit small for this, and I think basic automatic crash/usage reporting would be a better/simpler first step.
@Gaia - My concern is not only for myself, but for general "default ui" usability. Adding customization does not change usability for most users. I also think other areas of the UI are more ripe for customization, such as the header-bar controls, particularly the info-header. @ any unconvinced - I highly recommend you *try* the proposed 3/4 column menus for a couple days before you draw a conclusion about which you would prefer. It's quite alarming how much easier it is to find things (even for expert users) once entries stop moving around. _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers