looking for the lost max tab panel

thomasp

i am on the lookout for a script, ui-setup file, whatever that re-enables the good old max3-5 tab panel (shelves) that have been disabled in the default interface since then.

anyone know where to get that file again? i swear i saw it around the time of max7, perhaps even mentioned in this very forum. it must have been part of someone's script collection.

until now i used to hack my ui-files/transfer stuff from previous max-versions but it has become a mess. max8 takes ages to initialize on the work machine now, so i'd like to have a clean start with the freshly installed max9 again.

cheers.

Eric Chadwick

Try this mod...
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=1855384&postcount=3

And here's why Autodesk removed it...
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=2244631&postcount=5

thomasp

thanks eric. that mod seems to work 95% - i get the tab panel functionality as i wanted, but whenever i pull up the graph editor from the timeline and push it down again, the tabs get briefly re-initialized as toolbars in the middle of the screen before the interface becomes usable again.
that's quite weird - 7 never did that. time to switch back to the "real" graph editor, i suppose.

i knew about the performance issues with tabs and had read that cgtalk thread before but these are just too handy to live without imo.

from that thread:
[ QUOTE ]
Also, you can enable and disable, float and dock regular toolbars to keep your UI clean, while the tabs where eating lots of real estate...

[/ QUOTE ]

all nice and good but
a) a screen full of floating toolbars just plain blows. pushing toolbars around is not convenient - just like un-/hiding the things all the time.
b) an interface with several docked toolbars is way complex since everything is visible at one and wastes much more screen real estate than a row of tabs where functions are organised by theme. in my interface, i got rid of the entire default icon-bar at the top. it's all tabs now - and tidy, just the tools i need.

Eric Chadwick

Sounds neat. Do you have each tab hotkeyed, or just the whole thing?

Could you share a screenshot?