Task Views 'Close/Cancel' & 'Ok'

[paddle]

In FC, most of the tasks cancel & OK buttons are outside the taskboxes, on top of the task View.

I think this is not a good UI decision. for several reasons:

1 - The most intuitive place to find a command 'OK/Cancel' buttons are inside the command dialog. Having it outside is still understandable now because the TaskView kind of act as the command dialog but it's strange because taskview is not always used for a single task (see Sketcher widgets, PartDesign 'Start Page', Draft 'Create objects'...).
2 - It has led to a redundant 'Leave sketch' button in Sketcher that has been added for some kind of 'UI consistency' between taskviews. But this is imo the wrong way of handling a bad situation. The real problem is that the Cancel buttons are not where they should be.
3 - If someone want to use transparency for the task view (glass addon or coming RT stuff), then the Ok/Cancel button are hovering in empty space rather than being in the task box on solid ground.

So my suggestion is to :
A - Put the Close / Ok buttons where they should be in the individual taskboxes that actually need them.
B - remove sketcher Close button that is cluttering the already cluttered taskview.

The only downside, is that veterans will have to remap their brain on to where to find the button, which is going to annoy them 5 minutes. But keeping a bad UI for this reason is anti-improvement.

See the following mockup, on the left current situation, on the right proposal.

Untitled.png (80.35 KiB) Viewed 1506 times

[Roy_043]

There are task panels with multiple sections. See image. Where would you then place these buttons?

[adrianinsaval]

The buttons are above because like that no matter how long the task dialog you don't need to scroll down to use them, moving the buttons downs is a downgrade, I specially experienced this with the appearance dialog which had the close button bellow and was a PITA, not too long ago it was finally moved to be above the widgets.

I would only be onboard with moving the buttons bellow if the dialogs are all put in a scroll widget as openbrain suggested for sketcher in another thread, such that the buttons are static and always visible. But note that a change like this would have to be done in all dialogs at the same time otherwise we will en up with a horrible inconsistent mess.

Above removing the close button in sketcher, in any case I would remove the toolbar button, IMO it is important to have internal consistency, most dialogs have a close button or ok/cancel buttons there, the user expect to see it there. Whenever I exit sketcher with the mouse I use that button because FreeCAD has trained me to use buttons there to end a task.

[paddle]

There are task panels with multiple sections. See image. Where would you then place these buttons?

This is arch wall tool right? Are there many tools like this one?

I don't know this tool so it's hard to say, but maybe it shouldn't be split in 2 task boxes in the first place? It does look a bit odd.

I just tried it. It's UI is rather suboptimal/confusing. You even have 2 "Lenght" spinboxes at step 2... I'm not sure this should be taken as an example.

[paddle]

The buttons are above because like that no matter how long the task dialog you don't need to scroll down to use them, moving the buttons downs is a downgrade, I specially experienced this with the appearance dialog which had the close button bellow and was a PITA, not too long ago it was finally moved to be above the widgets.

Another solution is that they can be put on top of the taskboxes, but inside the taskbox.

[adrianinsaval]

Are there many tools like this one?

Yes, PartDesign_AdditivePipe the various PD primitives, Part_Primitives, the Part_CheckGeometry results page and probably others, not to mention what addons may do, this is a basic interface concept that can't just be removed out of nowhere.

Some of these also have separate widgets becuase they are reusing the UI from othere tasks, arch wall thing it's probably reusing the draft line ui and the PD primitives reuse the attachment dialog.

[Roy_043]

Let's not forget the Sketcher task panel which has 4 sections.

[paddle]

Sketcher has 4 widgets. They are not really conceptual 'tasks'. Which is why the Close button makes no sense. It's similar to part design 'Start page' taskboxe.

Looking quickly at the tools you mentioned Adrianinsaval, it feels like many just have poor ui.

Sharing code is not an excuse. They don't have to share taskboxes, they can share custom widgets the exact same way.

Please see below the mockup on the right and current pipe on the left. The pipe tool just looks weird with the settings separated in individual taskboxes.

pipe.png (52.23 KiB) Viewed 1377 times

[MisterMaker]

Couldn't we put it down the bottom but outside the scroll area?
On top outside the scroll area is also an idea.

[adrianinsaval]

that's not really the full dialog though

pipeTask.png (21.47 KiB) Viewed 1341 times

and I disagree with your idea that sketcher's dialog is like the PD dialog, the one in PD is just a filler when not in edit mode offering commands that are already present in the toolbar, the sketcher dialog is used while editing a sketch and is only visible when the sketch is in edit mode. It is indeed a task dialog, even more so if/once your widget is merged.

If you are telling me that you want to make all dialogs have a single groupbox I say the groupboxes make no sense whatsoever and instead of moving the ok/cancel/close buttons inside of them you should move the dialog into the main task dialog widget and remove the groupbox. But I disagree with the idea of unifying all of them because there are situations where these separate groupboxes make sense and should be kept.
IMO there is nothing to gain by moving the ok/cancel/close buttons, no space is gained, no UI inconsistency is solved, no confusing concept clarified. It's lots of work, but no improvement. The close button in sketcher is debatable but the rest is better as is now IMO.