I think I prefer the current UI, but your new one definitely looks really nice too. 
You design looks nice, I would make the following changes to it:
- Make the text and the icons a bit darker
- Remove entity icons
- Simplify inputs
The current UI design looks very outdated, similar to this forum. I don’t believe they lack manpower, it must be someone’s bad taste.
I prefer the current UI becauseyou know exactly where are each sections at first sight, while you loose your marks with the full black UI because there is no separation lines.
And it’s hard to know what is the active tab because they have almost the same color as inactive tabs.
I like it too, (I know it would be a lot of work) but possibly add a colour picker chart for the background and also the icon colour. (So if you really wanted you could go for a bumblebee look and have black icons on yellow)
I have no issues with the current UI, but the option of changing them would also be great.
Don’t care much, but I got used to current buttons so maybe as theme it would be ok, but as replacement, I don’t want it.
There are a lot usability and readability issues with current ui, one of most annoying one is not being able to edit the size of text input fields windows like description of variables.
I like the flat design, because it’s much easier to look at. Current editor skin is grey and even though there is not that much color variety it’s still tiring to look at.
Possibly instead of black I would use Dark Carbon color with more darker and ligher variation but still within dark spectrum.
I really like this new design. Not a fan of borders, rounded corners and titles bars which take lots of space.
Since you are in thread, maybe you know where the graphics for editor theme are stored ? (;.
This new theme looks very interesting
In my opinion, current default editor theme is a bit noisy - it has a lot of unnecessary visual elements. Also, I agree that space is wasted. And there are a few other issues (in my personal opinion):
-
Tool/Window icons are really bad. They are hard to distinguish one from another (some look almost completely the same) and they tell little about what they do when clicked.
-
All tools are under the same menu, and since we receive more and more of them it becomes difficult to find them under the same menu.
It’s pretty spread out. Unfortunately, we don’t have theme support yet.
Most of the image assets are in:
- \Engine\Content\Slate\
- \Engine\Content\Editor\Slate\
They are hooked up in C++ in CoreSlateStyle.h/.cpp and EditorSlateStyle.h/.cpp
The darker my UI the better, I dont like bright white stuff (unless its particles XD)
and I do like this design.
I think if there was an option inside UE4 to change to this UI i’d def give it a spin or two
My suggestion would be to add a very tiny icon option preferable separately selectable for Modes/Toolbar/Content browser.
Great, thanks.
I hope this would be enough for me to at least start investigating how it’s done and maybe how to use it.
Not a C++ developer, but I have some decent JS background, so who knows…
And now when in one day we quickly got to the Top20 topic on this forum I guess this subject is hot
and for me personally, it’s a green light to take it to the phase two and try to show and fix UX part,
at least obvious ones that we already collected.
Thanks for your votes and replies and please keep the suggestions coming!
Your work looks crisp and clean, and I have no real complaints about it.
But it’s funny that you think one particular visual style is “dated”, and then suggest a visual style that older developers like myself had as standard, back in the days when we didn’t have many colours or pixels to work with so everything had to be monochrome and more symbolic than iconic.
Go back a few years, and everybody was saying how important and effective it was that iOS embraced ‘skeuomorphic design’. Then Apple changed their mind and said how important and effective flat design was.
UI trends are just trends, and it’s important not to think that a style everybody else is using is somehow intrinsically better. Everyone switches to the new thing, and then in 2 years people will get bored of that and decide there has to be a new fashion. Do we want to have to relearn interfaces every few years because people got bored of the look?
SourceTree did the same a year ago - they switched everything to a flat, simple look, and annoyed their customers because it brought no real benefit apart from making designers happy.
https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/36182163/did-anyone-really-think-that-the-new-ui-was-an-improvement
Very good points.
It’s one thing if you’re building UIs for a mass-market, general audience - which might require constant adjustments to be suitably fashionable at any given point in time - but specialized tools for a niche market (engines, development tools, etc) is quite a different matter entirely.
It’s more about being efficient than trying to be trendy. I call it UI optimisation, less clutter, modular.
You might think it’s not a biggie but users judge by design first.
Look at this forum as an example, it’s a mess and outdated.
The UI design for the forums, roadmap, answerhub, marketplace etc should be unified and not different software installed under the same domain (Trello, vBulletin, Answerhub…).
This is not only confusing but also risky, like when the forums got hacked and all our details went public.
To me it says a lot when a company does not care about the look of its products. Take a look at Cryengine, they are doing a good job.
Whoaa, cool. I hope this will be a thing in the future 
I prefer that new look.
While I’m working on UX updates now,
let’s address some information void about “all is flat now”, “project X is flat and it’s bad”, “the grass was greener…”, etc.
Apple, Google, others not so small companies tested both approaches very carefully.
And they did the redesign successfully not because it’s a trend or conspiracy, but because it’s more effective.
If UI panels without tons of useless wood textures behind them work the same or even more efficient
then why waste priceless dev time / energy on unnecessary things like support for the leather textures?
For those who still don’t get why brands use these approaches,
please pay attention to the final message after the battle: google flatvsrealism
Anyway, I understand your fears, however,
**the approach to the redesign is well established. **
In short:
- the initial concept, test it on the forum, very small group of people
- iterate, test on the small audience with more radical updates
- iterate, test on the bigger audience - listen carefully, quick fixes, iterate if needed
Key aspects: prioritize the updates, starting with “invisible” changes
and slowly add more “radical” updates, carefully listening to the audience,
release updates one-by-one, not the whole update at once!
Fortunately, I have that experience with my own startups (we did a lot of errors, but we’ve learned a lot)
and my clients’ startups. In my 16y career, we did a bunch of successful redesigns for massive communities,
some with millions+ users.
Im not going to say flat is bad but it has some inherent issues, maybe not all with your design work though but the way the editor functions. The modes panel is a perfect example where the contrast was there for a reason so you could tell which subsection or tab you were in. If you look on your example is difficult to see that Basic being highlighted means that panel next to it contains different information. I personally never liked this panel anyway as it feels dated, it has tabs going one way at the top just to have them down the side on another and isnt consistent between tabs either.
Thats what I meant by contrast though is that its important to establish foreground from background not just through colour but tone. Obviously Im not telling you anything you dont already know though, I do feel as though the lighter grey we have now does tend to push out from the darker background more but I do like the lighter text and more cleaner layout of yours.
Another example though is on the Details panel categories where they blend in and shouldnt look flat since they are meant to be a hierarchy, those headings are for the collapsed groups. I do like your typeface though its easier to read and the numbers do stand out but I do worry that the input boxes arnt clear enough and that does extend abit to search.
Id actually like to see a large toolbar icon option without the text, if the icons do their job well then there shouldnt be a huge need for text. If we are going by modern UIs then maybe the file menu should go completely and be nested under a slightly larger UE4 logo. Im not sure if Im a fan of that or not but since there are only 4 things there for the engine its not as big of a deal as it is in other applications which have a massive list. Quite alot of the editor functionality can be got from the Toolbar anyway 
yep, you’ve valid points here. included in my todo list
thank you for the detailed reply!
Just saw the OP and I really love the design. Makes me want to spend more time with UE4 than I should.
