I tend to close other tabs more often than not now

Hello

I gave the new beta a quick go and something I noticed very fast is when switching between tabs, I tend to close them instead of opening them. I don't know why I'm so interested in pressing in just that area where the close button is, but it's really frustrating. I liked it more before where you can only close a tab if it's the selected tab.

I also believe tabs should have a minimum width because some are considerably shorter, like the two most important tabs 'Scene' and 'Game' and again, I tend to hit the close button. There's too little space to hit the actual tab.

I might be alone with this but I figured I could bring it up in case anyone else feels the same.

EDIT: I was certainly not alone with this. Nice

 

Yeah... I keep closing tabs I actually want to stay there all the time as well.

Something like being able to "lock" them (maybe by right clicking on the tab and it's an option there?), so that the X doesn't appear on them, would be nice.

 

I rarely ever close down any tabs so I see no reason to have a close option on tabs that aren't already selected.

It's not like in VS where you may want to close down multiple scripts at once.

So I agree with RealMTG, only being able to close tabs that are selected is perfectly fine.

 

old tab title was definitely better.. last time that i've actively needed to close a tab was probably many years ago..

also, just wondering that did a large group of developers requested for this feature?
or did UX team came to conclusion that this is a must have feature, and that there wont be any mistake clicks here with 1-2 pixel offset between close and scroll buttons?

for reference:
old (nice minimalistic)


new (cannot fit much tabs here)

 

I agree with others here and I don't personally really close tabs that often to need a separate button to close them. The right click close tab was fine and far "safer" action. The current close button implementation also eats a lot of screen space from tabs and is deceptive as you can quickly click the tab on the area where the x is hidden.

 

I also almost never close tabs and am concerned about UX designs like this hidden close button. There are many things that need to be perfected on Unity but you use resources to add a feature designed like a trap?

 

I mean, you can also close them by middle clicking, which is much less prone to errors, making the X buttons a bit redundant.

It's not like browsers where we open and close tabs all the time. In Unity most of the time, at least 90% of the interface should stay where it is. And if you need to close something, middle clicking or right click -> close is as handy as it needs to be.

 

I vote for restoring the old behaviour. Right clicking to close a tab is better. We usually keep tabs around in Unity... unlike a freaking browser.

That and the nested prefab cubes ... what the heck is going on with the editor. Downgrade in usability. Are people from a non-dev background advising Unity? It's not working for me.

It's not like I don't have over a decade working with it. Tabs now suck. Seriously unimpressed, it's a noob mistake.

Unity needs to stop fixing things that ARE NOT BROKEN AT ALL. That and understanding how long things live for in a dev environment.

Tabs in a dev environment stay around.
Tabs in a browser don't.

Learn it.

Blindly changing things cos another totally different thing does it is not good design. It's ... it's time for me to go and make a cup of tea so I can remain polite.

 

Please restore this or at least give us an option do disable it.

 

I just want to echo that currently the only bad thing I have to say about 2018.3 is this. Remove this, and life is great. So great!

 

There is a close button on a tab?
[mmb] to close ...
and for those unfortunate enough to not use a mouse with a middle button.. or laptop touch users <sigh>
right click > close

anything else and you are catering to a noob audience.... disabling the close buttons on top of tabs is the first thing I do with any web browser or ide ..or anything.

 

Please unity focus in providing needed features.

 

I totally understand people not liking this design change. I havent used it enough yet to form my own opinion, but I wont be surprised if I accidentally end up closing tabs when I didnt want to myself at some point, and then I will probably moan.

What I dont really agree with is the suggestion that Unity shouldnt be making these sorts of changes because they should be focussing on some other feature that people want instead. That doesnt really fit with how Unity develop these days I dont think, where they have very many teams looking at different areas. So even though it is true that ultimately there are finite resources available and correct prioritisation is always important, I really dont believe in thinking about features, progress and lack of progress in terms of a zero sum game where people moan about some new feature because it isnt the feature they want and they dont consider it important. We saw this quite a lot when VR was at the forefront of Unitys marketing, people moaning that all the other stuff wasnt being done because of VR. I understand the frustrations but I would drive myself crazy if I thought about things in that way, and its not the most useful or productive feedback for Unity anyway, the reality is more complex and multi-layered. Unity can correct design flaws in new systems, but asking them to stop progressing on some areas because you were happy with the old way is a dead end.

 

Really, how hard it is it to make these (and other hierarchy window) changes optional? Unity did a bang up great job of depreciating things over time previously.

But here in the editor there is no optional thing about it. No warning. Just bang, suck it up (hierarchy window + tabs). It's not a problem for me though I can't speak for other people.

 

Ive usually tended to see deprecated as something that happens to old systems, eg APIs, and its far less usual to see that stuff happen on the editor UI side of things.

I'm not surprised to see people complaining because there are inevitably two phenomenon here - the merits of or mistakes made when redesigning things, and peoples inevitable dislike of change. Criticism due to the former should not be written off or ignored because of the latter, but the latters effects are part of the mix and should be taken into account when reviewing negative feedback (ie dont ignore the criticism, but take it with a pinch of salt and dont rush to reverse changes).

 

Hierarchy is fine

 

They where efectivelly warned during previews for this to be optional, this would have been a win win for all and they've simply move on.

 

This suffers from the same issue that the forced use of hierarchy icons does... the problems get worse the busier the project.

This shouldn't be the case in a creative tool. It should scale very well, and complexity of project increasing should reveal why some features that don't make much sense in a simple project are increasingly beneficial in larger projects.

Want an example?

OOP and ECS and all other programming design patterns are designed to scale well, becoming increasingly beneficial with increasing project size and complexity. UI, in a tool for projects, should do the same.

 

Yeah this for the most part invisible close button is just a waste of screen space, and considering my right side menu already has a bunch of tabs on it. So now just to keep the width I like for that sidemenu means I've got some tabs going off the bar, for what.. an effing close button I don't give crap for seeing let alone using!

How hard is it shove things like this as optional features users can turn on/off in the preferences... because it really shouldn't be hard at all, it should mandatory as just common sense software development for a product with 10,000's of users.

If you want to do something with tabs Unity.. start making that in editor asset store actually damn well use them, or do what Valve eventually did with Steam and allow users to [mmb] on links to open them up in a popup window. I'm so sick of having to go between an actual proper browser to use the store and then back into unity asset store tab just download or browse anything out of it.. I can't stand it single window workflow.. I like tabs! lots of them! everywhere! And where is the UGUI specific scene tab layout already!

Also have an option to make the in-editor help button shortcut open the documentation in a unity Tab! and not the desktop default browser already.

 

huh duuude, now saw it with my own eyes, definitelly that empty space needs to be reworked. Middle button is to me the way to go, yet, what I would do if you need that close X is to keep size form previous version and simply overlay the x with a gray background on top of the text. But as it is now feels wrong.

 

and sadly its all downhill from here..

just look at those "iterative progress"-monsters that are coming:


*new editor ui images from unite videos

 

If anythig I needed more ways of opening tabs easily. I often fight to try to get multiple locked inspector tabs so i can work on multiple items at once, and it's a total pain to get multiple inspector tabs open since control + 3 wont open a new inspector if you have one open, even if it's locked.

 

Huh, that looks like a mock up since it's incompatible with what just came out with 2018.3

 

^^^ !!! THIS !!! ^^^

I've done all sorts of experiments to find ways to rapidly get to the arrays of inspectors I want/need in conjunction with Animation Clip timelines (not Timeline timelines) to do editing of values, and select objects to edit, and be in the right state to edit, etc.

The failure of Unity to provide a good means to spread the workflow across two screens, and the complete failure to permit the use of multiple desktops on a Mac, only make this problem MUCH worse. Now that tabs can be easily accidentally closed, the whole process of rebuilding the UI structure to useful begins midway, again. It''s ANNOYING, in capitals. And bolded.

This is the kind of 'improvement' that engineers and designers that don't tend to use the software much might come up with, and then enforce as the new and only way. There's not many other reasons I can think of to explain how this happened.

 

The dream would be being able to open a new tab that is locked, and visibly docked, of the current tab that is open with Control + Shift + 3. "Hey i need to work on this permanently for a while, but i want to keep my current inspector tab so i can still click around and find other stuff I want to work on.... control + shift + 3

 

YES!

This is compounded by the fact that one inspector, the first one ever opened, acts like a 'god' inspector, in some weird and some crucial and good ways, and some annoying ways.

 

Another thing... that bugs me... why doesn't the active Inspector have a back button, that goes back to the previous thing it was showing?

This is most annoying when going from hierarchy object inspection to project object inspection, and then trying to go back again. Or vice-versa.

One work around for this, command-clicking an object that's not currently selected and displayed in an inspector should open a new inspector (possibly as a tab) for that newly selected object, leaving the currently displayed object alone in its tab/inspector for reference. Just like browsers do...

This would increase the need to close tabs, but massively reduce the need to manually lock tabs.

 

Well there you go, if they added some of these abilities to easily open tabs you want, locked and permanently so you can work on your stuff without wrestling to set them in a visible place and then lock them, that would give a reason for the above functionality to easily close tabs

 

This is my concern, seems like their UI / UX guys are not consulting actual engine users and have no clue how these are going to be used. Just looking at the drop down menus at terrain properties now hint that UX guys never tried to build a terrain with it (yes, there are shortcut keys but they are on F-keys, which isn't where people would expect them to be either).

 

I actually really like how those look. The UI could stand some facelift.

 

facelift is ok, if it doesnt make things worse..
to me it looks like that new ui takes much more extra space (look at hierarchy/project windows and inspector),
so you'll end up having to scroll all the time, doing extra clicks just to get some item in view.. bad user experience.

 

This is horrid. It's pretty much what happened when they "upgraded" forum ui and were forced to go back a week later.
All that wasted space, all those separator, giant buttons, show that the people who design that are detached from actual development and what's important to a developer. Yes it's fancy, ok, cool flat colors, modern, we get it, now please study graphics packages, and ask yourself why all of their UI's are super condensed.
You think anyone using UE4 has "big toolbar icons" enabled?

I suggest what, you sit down your UX artist, open a huge and complex project for him and ask him to navigate giant scenes with humongous prefabs full of long scripts and filled with large amounts of asset references.
Will blow his mind away.

 

Sorry what is that hellish ui?!! I installed the beta 1 and despite some very questionable changes like tabs yakin unnecesary spave and icons overall seemed the same.

 

Ive suffered an against community ui chane in Microstation with catastrophic consequences in productivity. Hope this is not how it ends for unity losing time into implementing fancy useless overenginiered solutions. Im seriously worried.

 

I can't remember, but whatever and wherever it came from it needs burning in a hell fire along windows 10 for setting the bar so effing low for S***ty bare bones flat gui design and total utter garbage dumb downed layouts in modern gui and ux...

Is nothing wrong with subtle gradients and bevels and other little graphic elements, it helps break up monotony and seperate elements better. Combined with sensible padding/margin widths that don't leave great swarthy hordes of empty space everywhere

 

considering the attitude of Unity somehwat like "if you like it you take if you don´t stay where you're I'm rolling you flat", that ui shot was quite terrifying.

 

I think Unity needs to just calm down with UI changes and slow right down there. It's not even a priority at all. It's like the lithium forum thing all over again.

Really, we want lovely technology. We want raytrace support, great tech etc. Don't want diddling with the editor. Somehow I don't really want to pay Unity staff to diddle around with UI that works fine and is way less important than getting bug-free tech, you know, for the whole bloody point I use Unity for. Making games using tech.

If staff need to change UI... how about no? how about you change the technology so we, asset store and github can make those changes if we want? you lose nothing.

The whole philosophy behind the editor (and one of the major turnoffs for UE4) is the editor is simple and can be extended ourselves or via asset store.

I was told by Unity once that the philosophy behind the editor is building it around my game, so it becomes my game's editor. I loved that. I don't like the potential future where it starts become complicated and forced on me.

Asset store is stuffed with editor tools and people have a great time picking and choosing what they want. Nested prefabs or improved prefabs should be a tech change so asset store, or github can plug what people think they want. UI enhancements should be a tech change for the same reason. allow access to tabs. Let people use a script or make a script if they want to override them for x close.

When I left feedback in prefabs forum regarding the prefab icons dominating the entire hierarchy (even for people with no interest in prefabs) and how it would conflict with Unity's own UI plans here and custom hierarchies, I was told by rune that my feedback was not appropriate for that forum. So I don't think Unity cares much about UI feedback. I'll go make a cup of tea.

 

the only thing i want from editor is a bar on top with tabs instead of clunky workspaces you need to save and load and all that

if i can switch from shader editor layout to scene view, to 4 pane csg editor etc with a single click on a tab, that would be great.

 

They are working on this but as much as I would like to play with this myself it's not that big of a priority, especially since it's currently only Nvidia side.

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/ScriptableRenderPipeline/tree/Raytracing_Initial

The number of people who will get the new cards might not be a lot for a while and having AMD with raytracing cards as well will make this a higher priority. From my point of view, those cards are mainly Dev Heaven until the tech is widespread (which then it will be a better Dev heaven - from what I can see on Art/Design side).

It was stated that the UI changes would be a package and you can get it if you want. This might be good for a while but might be complicated managing two versions of the editor when adding tools (Dev side as the user would probably make tools for the UI version they want to use) I also thought that the current changes would also be a package and people who want to use it would get it and the redesign would be an update to that or a separate package. A lot of stuff not clear right now but yea, this is what happens when change is sudden (even though not much changed yet)

This is what's happening with the new version of Blender 2.8 called Workspaces. This could be nice for Unity but it's still dictating how they think you wanna work (which is mainly the concern of most people here not wanting to be forced to do things a certain way by the UI). Maybe make it customizable so it comes with some defaults but you can change it to what you want or add new ones to it (This is how Blender is handling it)



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Currently, the new UI changes are so small compared to what's being said about the next version that I don't have much input for the current state (except for things I think will translate) since the next version might/will be drastically different so concerns about it now just wouldn't translate to the next. I'm waiting to see what 2019 version will be like as this one is just a small change that probably only live out through the 2018.4 LTS. Seems most people here don't/ won't use LTS as they are interested in the new features so they follow the Tech Stream.

2018.3 compared to 2019 cycle Mockup

2018.3


2019 Mockup

 

I actually have very opposite opinion. IMO Unity editor UI and UX would benefit from face lift and from making new things integrate better. The issue right now is that we have legacy editor that has been almost the same since Unity 1.0, things have just been slapped on it using the conventions that worked 10 years ago. But while this is good for people who a) look up old unity tutorials on the web and b) seasoned devs who are already used to current editor experience, it still doesn't take away that it is outdated by modern standards. While I personally don't care about the looks of a tool, I do come across people often that are put off by the Unity editor looks alone.

There are lots of weird things going on that people have just grown to accept. New dockable settings is a nice improvement for example, but even that is bit odd, now we have Preferences for "Editor Settings" and Settings for "Game Settings". I'd rather have these both in same dialog, like have game and editor just behind different main tab or something. Same goes with build settings. Current approach is still very mixed bag and I do hope Unity keeps improving on small things like these (which we still use a lot every day).

Right now there are IMO way too many ways in creating gameobjects and components, while I do get that having options is good, I find that these extra menus and buttons just waste the space. Right now you can add gameobject from main menu, by clicking create on hierarchy or by right clicking the hierachy panel. Similar deal is going on with game objects as you can add them from the main menu or from the properties panel. I personally never use the main menu entries for these but can see how it would be troublesome to remove these things now when some people still use them.

There are lots of small, especially UX related things that would make Unity Editor nicer to use:

Right now you can't for example copy Vector 3 from Transform position, rotation or scale in Unity editor. This would be handy when copy/pasting specific things from gameobject to another. There is "copy component" and "paste component values" which you can use to copy whole component (which is transform in this example) but in my use cases, I'd often want to copy/paste only the location and that is not possible now without doing it one by one for each X, Y and Z values. Having copy/paste option for a single properties would be a huge improvement.

You can't highlight the asset in the project explorer while select asset dialog is open. I'd love to be able to highlight the item before picking it up. You can only ever highlight the asset after you've selected it but often you'd want to see that you are getting the right thing from right path without having to read the path from the small print in the select dialog (which usually doesn't even fit into the dialog window when you use it).

I could keep going on but the point was mainly: you can improve the workflows with small changes all the time, it's never a wasted effort if it's designed well. I personally dislike every extra click, it's like red flag for me and this is why I absolutely dislike the new terrain editor UX, it's literally going into opposite direction I'd want it to go (love the new terrain feats tho).

 

As a side note, people complaining about the empty space on the mockup are missing some things, it's not all about the filling every inch of the screen-space but usability. For example there are things I do like in the mockup:

- I like that they moved the title to lower part as it means we get less of that OS side top bar. Although if it were up to me, I'd have the whole main menu gone in current form and implement it with something that integrates better in single top row.

- you actually get the scene related icons like local/world and new mesh tools right in the scene border, which is way more logical place to put those vs having them in the top border where you have to move your mouse to the edge of the screen to click those.

- project panel can fit in single column width so it can be docked under hierarchy panel, having small empty space next to folders isn't any kind of issue, you have that now too on your project panel on folder side.

 

2018.3 haven't gotten the new UI theme (preview) package and Unity has been super quiet about this, it's possible it's still arriving before final.

 

Yea, the main differences are gradients removed (Flat design) and the Icons slightly updated (As far as I can see so it shouldn't throw people off). Other than that it's basically how it is currently. I'll be getting it as soon as they make it available. I'm also looking forward to the redesign to see how things are and how it's improving things. Unite LA will most likely have more info on this version.

I'm all for the change as long as it doesn't go backward in usability (As you mentioned with the new terrain UI) what stood out to me the first time I messed with it was having to use the drop-down menu to select adding neighboring terrains and the other op[tions to edit the terrain. This could be another row of Icons for each mode or something better, then again this is an early version and there are UI changes coming all over the place so might be worked on for that instead. (If by full release and LTS it's still the same it would be a minor issue for those updating to those versions)



I also thought the new Terrain system was going to be a package as well

 

GUI skin change is harmless. Prefabs preventing the proposal of what the hierarchy could be, and blocking that, is not, and we're not allowed to actually discuss that on the prefabs forum.

These changes in flight, are all minor. But I'm pretty sure these changes don't end there and my comments are directed toward what it will be, which is an editor that will slowly become more entertaining in directions staff want to pull it.

Which as far as I can tell are in different directions since the pictures Unity released of the UI to come are incompatible with 2018.3

 

yeah you're not the only one who thought that drop down was dumb.. specifically the raise/lower height stuff.. and then a drop down just for smoothing... I mean... what sort of workflow methodology is that? sure they are different things... However it's like programmer who never bothered to actually work with the tools ffs. Sort it out Unity.

 

They probably took example from UE4, they do this nonsense there too Good thing is that terrain tools have hotkeys on F-keys

 

Looks like this thread derailed from the tab closing issue to something completely different

 

It's hard making everyone happy and coordinating features to coincide with future features, but this was definitely a good move in the now. To reiterate in the future many of us are more excited for cool new ways to OPEN tabs, rather than CLOSING them.

 

It doesn't need to be removed.. just throw options in the preference for it... including the main disable.

also when the tab is active.. the close x button should show up all the time.. not just on tab mouse over.
and if inactive tabs are going to take up that extra space on the right side for the close button then show the close button all the time on those aswel.

is at least whole bunch of options for that one thing alone.

Though personally I'd much rather see in editor camera settings provided in the preferences like for setting all the hardcoded speed settings, max speed, how long it takes for the camera to reach certain speed, clipping planes etc.