Proposal : Improve Properties Panels

Development
1

For me, there are too much information in the properties panel and some filters might be hard to understand. I think there are a lot to improve in the properties panel but for now I will focus on the properties group.

We sometimes don’t need to adjust the properties of a specific group but this group stay entirely visible in the property panel. I propose here to add an arrow near the group name to collapse or unrolled the properties of the group. Maybe we should open the discussion if we should collapse or unroll all by default. Personally I think we should unroll all by default to keep the properties easily accessible but I put a poll here to get your opinion on it.

  • Collapsed by default
  • Unrolled by default
0 voters

Here what collapsing would look like :

Screenshot from 2026-07-06 17-14-58
Screenshot from 2026-07-06 17-14-58426×541 35.3 KB

Adding this would likely require some refactoring of the filters. For instance, the Data Axes Grid is currently not part of any group, whereas it could be placed under Miscellaneous to avoid having a standalone property. But I don’t think it is necessary to review all existing filters to identify ungrouped properties to add this feature. Instead, we could address these cases incrementally whenever a filter is modified.

2

That’s an interesting idea. I think I like the tidiness.

I assume there would be expand all / collapse all buttons.

One caveat: even if groups are collapsed, when you type something in the search bar you should be able to see the entry.

3

Will this affect XML test cases? That is, will the tests now need to gain “expand group” actions whenever they act on the properties panel?

Not saying it’s a problem, but updating the XML files should be added to the task list and accounted for if necessary.

4

Unless the child widgets are created on the fly when expanding a group (which they would not be given my understanding of things), the XML should not need to be changed. Widgets do not need to be visible for the testing framework to generate synthetic events on them.