I must say there seems to people who are unopen to change on both sides.
Some of the people who have gotten used to blender are like "Blender is fine why change it". Blender in my opinion is very good but there is always room for improvement. And some of the sound arguments for improving the interface seem to be met unwaivering replys that aren't open to change. Like the whole icon screens that were shown. Yeah maybe they would clutter up the interface but instead of being like "Nope they clutter up the interface so it can't be added at all". For those opposed to the idea, maybe propose something that meets your ideas and the ideas of that person. Compromise.
Personally, I took the time to learn Blender and I love. It took me about 3 weeks to learn but I eventually did it. Unfortunatly not everyone has the time to do that so I don't blame them for wanting the application to resemble something they are used to already doing. And saying things like "You don't like Blender then just open up the source code and change it" don't help because if I'm an artist with no programming experiance this probably isn't going to happen. And even if I did have programming experiance but no Python experiance I now have to learn Python.
Then there are the people who are like "Blender's interface is too different it should be more like app xyz". There are benefits to sitting down and just forcing your mind to learn Blender. Once you get used to it you find that it is very fast. Remember this is Blender. It's going to behave like Blender. I wouldn't expect 3DS Max or Maya to behave like Blender so I accept that fact and try to learn the application. Learning new things takes time. And like many people have said if you would like an interface change propose a good argument( like the screenshots that were posted ) as to why this xyz feature/change would be a benefit to Blender.
And last but not least some of the post where it's like "I'm sorry if I sound rude but so what" Funny some people don't take the time to consider how they are coming off when posting but then are suprised when someone gets upset to their responses. I personally don't like my ideas being dumb or unreasonable and I'm pretty sure others don't either. If you don't agree with someone you can easily tell them with out coming off sounding rude. I mean if you have to post "I'm sorry if I sound rude but..." that already tells me you know there's a problem with what you are going to say. I only say this because this is usaually how intellegent and good topics like this one start turning into insults back and forth. Golden rule and all that.
This is the greatest thing said in this topic that I think solves both sides of the issue. And this is why I love Blender. Some of the features people ask to get can sometimes take a little time to get there but it seems like the devs do listen. And this seems like a very excellent soulution. A Blender interface that can be customized to work like Blender, Max, Maya, XSI, or whatever. If that happens everybody wins.That said, there is work planned to allow custom mouse, menu, panel, and keybindings that could go a significant way towards reducing the difficulty in migrating to Blender from other 3D packages.
Also after customization becomes much easier - I hope to have a look at doing single purpose simplified interfaces.
- LetterRip
I LOVE BLENDER.