Oof.
For context, this is how it was before in EA2:
The dropdown is soooo much less intuitive than buttons (added steps for no reasons are an ergonomical no-no in UI design). Somehow we went from annoying dropdown in UE4 to a great layout in UE5 EA2, and then BACK to the dropdown?!?! Why??? (I understand this is probably to accommodate a smoother transition for UE4 users but…seriously, why).
Would love it if we could at least have the option to switch back to buttons layout <3 Or, better yet, what Adobe has done for long-time Photoshop users: the better, fewer-steps UI layout as default and a ‘legacy’ checkbox for older users who don’t want to re-learn muscle memory.
I agree. when i earlier looked at what changed, i first had a brainfart moment, because the modes where gone. and then i saw “ah. its a hamburger menu again. why?”
1 Like
Hi! Friendly UX programmer here, and I want to answer this b/c I have seen it come up a lot in feedback for the preview builds and now today’s 5.0 release!
Thank you for reaching out with this feedback, by the way - it’s really valuable to us to hear from everyone about how you’re using the engine.
For the mode menu, we wanted to add text labels for clarity, and the dropdown menu lets us do that while leaving lots of room on the toolbar for plugins and other tools to add buttons.
With hotkeys, you still have one-action access to your modes, so hopefully that helps with workflows where you are changing between modes frequently. We are still looking at ways to make it even clearer which hotkeys are available, but for now you can see them in the dropdown menu.
With this change, as with many of the other UX updates in UE5.0, we know there will be a bit of a learning curve. Each change we made went through a lot of team discussion, to make sure that there was enough long-term benefit to workflows to justify changing something. We’re excited for you to try things out and discover all the new improvements! If after working with something new for a while, you still feel like there is something disruptive about it, this Feedback area in the forums is a great place to let us know. Thanks!
1 Like
Hey - thanks for the response, I really appreciate it! I don’t necessarily agree with it haha, since this can be achieved with tooltips if text-explanations are a must have (as most UIs these days achieve this in this way), but really appreciate you taking the time to pop in with an explanation for the change. Have a good afternoon! 
1 Like