ParaView Usability Improvements

For ParaView 4.0, we are planning to revamp the user interface to make it more intuitive and easy to use. This page can serve as the scratch-pad for coming up with improvements.

1. Compact object inspectors

• Object inspector panes can be too spaced out with large widgets. They should be redesigned to be compact and small. The idea being that the user can leave it floating around as a toolbox which consuming too much screen space.

2. Separate Simple & Advanced Object Inspector

• The first tab in the object inspector will be a "simple" inspector listing only the most important filter properties and relevant display options.
• For all other options the user can go to the "advanced" tab, which will list other advanced filter properties and display properties.

3. Style for Object Inspector

• Style the object inspector as a "toolbox" or properties page.
• Instead of using tabs use icons that the user can click on to switch from basic to advanced view.
• Does information tab really belong here?

New Style Properties Page for Contour Filter

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4. Click to select objects

• Currently user needs to click on the pipeline browser to activate an object, he should be simply be able to click in the 3D view to select it. This conflicts with the interaction mouse clicks so perhaps use "Ctrl+Left Click" to select an object or vice-versa.

5. Drag and Drop sources into views

• User should be able to drag sources/filters from the pipeline browser into a view to show it in that view. Avoids the whole "active view" confusion.
• Same can be extended to drag-n-drop filters from toolbars (eg. common filters toolbar) to create them.