User:Jacek Antonelli/New UI Paradigm

(My words, copied from a transcript, so not the best writing ever.)


 * New UI paradigm, probably subconsciously inspired by the Ribbon.
 * Also by your idea for making the sun control easier to access, a bit.
 * The idea was that along the bottom or sides of the screen, there are a row of tabs. They could probably replace most or all of the toolbar buttons.
 * When you click on a tab, it expands outwards from the side, and has a little pane with options and controls and sliders, or whatever.
 * It'd be kinda docked to the side of the screen, but you could grab the tab (which would be sticking out the side or top, maybe) and pull it away from the side to detach it as a floater.
 * And likewise drag it back to the side or bottom of the screen to re-dock it.
 * The newish thing that hit me, was that there could be a selection of tabs to choose from, so users could put whatever tabs they need along the bottom, to get quick access to the things they need most.
 * So, there'd be one for environment controls, one for building, one for inventory, one for chat/IM, etc.
 * I was picturing them as all having partially transparent black rounded rectangles for the frames, like the chat / chat bubbles / name tags do.
 * And maybe the controls could fade out a bit when the tab/floater doesn't have focus, so that they wouldn't totally obscure your view.