Reorganization for panels menu

Motivation

  • Inkscape's current "Open panel" menu have headers that allow users to navigate between categories and find the desired panel with relative ease.

    CleanShot 2025-01-24 at 23.27.31.png

  • Labels and organization seem too broad

    • A "Basic"section could probably have only the essentials and most required features for completing a simple design or illustration task: manipulate objects in the canvas and export the resulting artwork.
      • Panels like "extensions gallery" and "unicode" seem to be for other specific use cases.
      • The new and more capable "object properties" panel could be allocated in the "basic" section.
    • The "Advanced" section groups menus that are not related, and some of them could be grouped by similarity into more descriptive categories.

Proposal

  • This is a draft and totally up for discussion. The goal of this issue is to open up for discussion better ways to organize this panel.
    • Competitors don't have a similar feature.
    • This panel could be a good opportunity to communicate Inkscape's capabilities, but it can be overwhelming at first sight.
  • No usability study was conducted, and a card sorting activity with users would be appreciated for this initiative.
  • New categories and organization proposal:
    • Basic: covers the essentials
    • Text & Typography: groups tools related to text and type manipulation
    • Effects & Actions: groups filters, live path effects, and related panels
    • Assets: groups panels related asset management and usage
    • Advanced: groups panels for more advanced users that want to manipulate the file with using deeper knowledge and technical capabilities.
    • Properties: document and Inkscape settings.
    • Diagnostic: same as today, and only available when enabled in settings.

Panels.png