Collection of guidance to build intuitive experiences with reusable components, patterns, style guidance, and code.
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Who Uses Editor Foundations
We encourage everyone who authors experiences for the Unity Editor to take advantage of the Editor Foundations Design System©, such as technical and non technical creators, engineers, designers, product managers and any one who wants to avoid duplication of efforts and save on production time.
The aim of Editor Foundations is to improve the Unity user experience by making the Editor UI more consistent, coherent, and easier to use by:
- defining best practices for the UI design of the Editor and extensions
- giving clear design rationale so users can make well-informed decisions when building UI
- providing up-to-date documentation for the latest Unity LTS release
- creating a virtuous feedback loop that allows users to suggest fixes and improvements to both the Editor and the Editor Foundations Design System
Editor UI Frameworks
The Unity Editor supports two user interface (UI) authoring frameworks;
UITK is an authoring framework that is inspired by web technologies.
Read more ->
IMGUI is a code-driven GUI system, and is mainly intended as a tool for programmers.
Read more ->
Unity recommends you to use UI Toolkit for your new UI development projects.
Editor Releases
Currently, the content covered in Editor Foundations are targeted for LTS Release 2022.3.
Editor Foundations largely supports the latest Long Term Support (LTS) releases for the Unity Editor, while periodically providing version agnostic content, or guidance on new alpha controls when requested / needed.
Usability Principles
A robust set of usability principles underpins the Editor Foundations' guidance at every stage. This strong grounding ensures a quality user experience in the Editor through the creation of consistent UI.
Users first
- We incorporate a deep understanding of Editor creators that is informed by ongoing user research
- We place creator goals and needs at the heart of every design and content decision
- We provide a consistent design foundation that accelerates users’ creativity and new ideas
Driving alignment
- We use a common language that both designers and engineers can understand
- We balance ideal design best practices with how the Editor realistically works
- We promote consistent standards and practices to unify the look and behavior of UI across the Editor
Authentically Unity
- We are guided by the core Unity Values to work collaboratively with various technologies and our users
- We adjust Editor Foundations guidance as the needs of our creators and platforms evolve
- We prioritize bold and thoughtful enhancements that improve the daily lives of the Unity community
