Mouse-wheel opinions wanted

#1

I think this question got lost among the other wish-list messages so I’m going to start a separate thread on the topic.

"Okay, folks, I’d like to branch this thread in a particular direction: mouse wheel support.
Your mission is to think about what you’d want a mouse wheel to do and how. My personal request is to have window zooming be not just controlled by the wheel but to be able to zoom in where the cursor is. I’ve seen this on Solidworks and it’s a very cool feature.

Bear in mind that you can use modifier keys during wheeling. Now I know a bit about mouse wheel events on the Mac i.e. there is support for horizontal as well as vertical. I don’t know if third-party mice can do this. I know a Mighty Mouse can. I also don’t know if two axis wheeling exists in Windows."

So, if you have an idea, tell us what it is and exactly how you’d want it to work including what mouse and keyboard actions are involved.

#2

I like your idea of centre of mouse zooming a lot.

And I think it was Brian that mentioned hot-key scrolling would be a cool way to walk through the hierarchy. I see this working thus:

Command scroll walks through the root hierarchy skipping over children (hidden or not)
command-alt (option) scroll walks through the visible hierarchy, that is to say, all the objects that you can see in the project window can be reached in this manner. I think this is how the useful keyboard walking should work.

Clicking the mouse wheel should show/hide children (essentially mapping command-shift h to the wheel click).

So, how hard would it be to change the standard EI ‘window active’ event handler to ‘mouse within window’. That is to say, I’m not a fan of clicking in or on a window to activate it, I would like this interactive zooming to take place on whatever window the mouse happens to be over…

C’est tout.
Ian :slight_smile:

#3

This is a very welcome feature!

And mousewheel scroll in the project window :slight_smile:

While you are working on the input devices, could you also take a look at the weird zoom jump when using a Wacom?

Cheers

Hans

#4

There needs to be a method of “unhiding” or “hiding” all objects in a hierarchy that are “collapsed” at once. Selecting all and “hide/unhide” just toggles this setting for all objects. If some hierarchies are hidden, and others visible, it is difficult in large projects to go from all visible to all hidden.

This is important for switching to views other than hierarchy.

The Merge feature should have the option to MERGE Master materials with the same name, rather than creating duplicates (choose which material to use on picking project to merge).

There should be a “purge” feature to automatically delete unused master materials.

#5

Hey Blair,

anywhere there are scroll bars the mouse scroll wheel would be appropriate. The Materials pallet often messes people up because it has no scroll bar and doesn’t respond to the mouse wheel (I know, spacebar, it’s a feature!).

Also within the f-curve editor and the project window time line, you’ve got left/right and up/down possibilities for the mighty mouse “2 D” style scrolling. Up and down to see various items on long lists, left right for earlier and later on the time line.

In the various orthographic and camera windows perhaps middle click and drag for Pan?

Just some thoughts.

#6

Use the mouse wheel to change values in any input field when you hover over it? I’ve used software like that and it feels incredibly responsive. Command scrolling would go 10x slower and shift scrolling 10x faster.

#7

I just got my FormZ 6 and it zoom in and out at the curser position. I definately would like this in EI.

#8

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.