A proposal for document editor type grouping as an option to slightly simplify the editor UX.

[omniuni]

I have seen a few proposals for "fixing" the Godot editor UI, but each of those proposals sacrifice at least some of the UI functionality and/or would require heavy modification of the existing Godot UI.

This is my suggestion to allow an optional "grouped" documents workflow with minimal required changes to the UI.

In "Grouped" workflow, clicking the editor types opens just that in the main editor area. 2D/3D display the tabs as usual, but only the 2D or 3D documents that are currently open in each one. They also gain a drop-down menu for selecting the active file, which as it does currently, controls the left and right panels. The Scripts and AssetLib each open taking over the entire editing space. Clicking the 2D or 3D options directly would bring the user to the current selection of that type.

This should allow for minimal changes to the overall UI, really only adding the drop-down selection menus to the editor selection, and hiding the 2D/3D document tabs when the script editor and AssetLib are selected.

I think this would make things much more easily understood without significantly hampering some of the drag-and-drop functionality that is present in the UI.

[omniuni]

I wanted to take some time to add a little more context and flesh this out some as well.

First, I think it is worth adding WHY the existing UX is unpredictable. When a user sees a line of tabs, the expected behavior is that the tabs will, when clicked, change the content of the panel they are attached to. In Godot, right now, clicking the tabs is a contextual action. If you have the 2D editor selected, clicking the tab of the file switches to that scene and also changes the left and right panels. If you have the script editor open, it changes the left and right panels but NOT the central editor panel. In this proposal, the 2D and 3D editors would retain the tab bar for document switching which would change the central panel and side panels (as expected) but hide those tabs when the script editor is open, given that they do not operate as expected.

Although in the mockup above, I showed a simple menu, one benefit to this approach is also that it can be easily enhanced with additional functionality. For example, tapping the keyboard shortcut for 2D when they are in scripts could pop open the dropdown, and allow document selection, tapping the shortcut again with the dropdown open would switch to the editor itself. Tapping the shortcut button and highlighting a document from the menu and pressing the shortcut again while highlighted can switch to the editor AND select the document. The drop-down menu could also include a search/filter box, and even show results of relevant scenes that aren't open yet, allowing quick keyboard navigation.

I think that there is value in respecting a UX that feels familiar, and having tabs drive panels outside the one they are connected to, but only in some situations makes the Godot IDE itself feel unintuitive. Godot is an amazing project, and small enhancements like this could help improve adoption and make it easier for people to understand.