here's an interesting but deadly thing to have happen.. I was trying to make my p5 window more roomy by minimizing the tools and moving them out of the way... not sure about P4, but in P5, if you drag any tools to the tab vicinity, they get stuck up there and become nonfunctional...and unable to move...(screenshot of location)..the ui and editing tools are now stuck up there and don't work... of course , you can reload Poser and all will return to normal ??? yes...but you can't drag the stuff up above the tab area...

I made P5 more roomy by using a large monitor set to 1600x1200. Still a little crammed, but everything fits and nothing in that dreaded "tab area". You can also display the Editing tools and Document Style vertically.

I believe that if you go to Edit->General Preferences and Choose "Launch to factory state" option the tools shall revert to their normal position.

I wish they would just get rid of the catchy bryce like interface! One the reasons Poser hogs so much ram is just to give it it's way high-graphic interface. Nice shadows I dont care about. Notice how my image of Lightwave shows a pragram that lets me consentrate on the 3D space. The menus take up 5% of the screen and memory hogging graphics! And people ask "Why does Poser crash when I hit Render?"

Some people prefer a sterile CAD environment with no distractions; some people prefer a friendly, but warm&fuzzy, artistic environment. If you want to use a drafting program, why complain about the appearance of the others? Carolly

:) My main thing is to get a bit of room for my working window... My eyes just can't make out those little objects anymore.. suppose I could back down my res to 640x480 LOL

I want Poser with a non-fancy interface. I don't know anything about drafting? Forgot to post my image of lightwave. I shouldn't complain though. I have dual moniters. But I wonder if they toned down the warm/fuzzy stuff would the program be more stable then?

I think its a branding tie-in, albeit some might call a throwback, to Poser's inital association with Kai's PowerTools [weren't they both MetaCreations at one time?]. While I agree that they have done beautiful things with the interface, the marriage of form and function can be hard on machines not up to the overhead. Still, even though it might have been a bit on the side of overkill, I can honestly say I like the artistic and visionary design of the interface. :)

the interface set the meatcreations applications apart from the other, cad like, windows designed GUI. I believe Kai collaborated or perhaps wrote a book on interface design....he was definitely thinking in artistic terms...and somewhat functional :) I remember when I first used this type of interface..I thought it was very cool...just looked good...but I've never fully liked it in use all that much...

Lumping all non-standard interfaces together is not really fair. Bryce's is the most functional of the lot and easiest to use as well as being the most attractive. I've never found Poser's to be as functional. However, the trackball is a wonderful invention for mouse users. And I suspect there's a big gap between mouse users (I mean USERS) and those who prefer keyboard input.

maybe that's the deal..mouse vs. keyboard... I rarely use keyboard shortcuts, and much prefer mouse. Like I said above, I need more working window real estate.. I find it hard working in the default 300x300 or whatever that size is....need at least 640x480, but then the tools are buried. I find myself contantly rearranging the desktop trying to get visible whichever tool I need at the time. One thing I've started doing a lot recently, is to plug in numbers in the parameter dial boxes, especially for comera control..it is much faster once you figure out how far away something is. Some of the new props and terrain products require much farther camera movements...it is near impossible to keep pulling on those trackball arrows. I wish Poser had an efficieent way for you to figure out how far away the camera was from objects..and to know the actual size of them as well.