Improve usability of modified property hint

[MadeScientist]

Describe the project you are working on

Godot

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

When using inspector to modify properties, we don't care about everything, our attention is always focused on adjusting properties that frequently modified or that have already been modified.

• For the former(frequently modified), although we already merged PR(Make possible to favorite properties in the inspector godot#97415 ), it still has some shortcomings such as incompatible with built-in scripts, but not very critical. The critical one is that it forces properties to move to the top. Move is definely better than duplicate. However, sometimes you just want to tweak/favorite visible of one Node2D instance, it will also favorite visible of all nodes inherited from Node2D, as the number of base class's favorites increasing(e.g. visible, process_mode, z_index), finally the top area of the inspector will still become chaotic.

For example, the following favorites of a CollisionShape instance(which maybe don't needs it) actually come from favorites of another Node2d instance(which really needs it).

• For the latter(already modified), the current implementation using (n changes) hint and revert button to show you which properties have been modified is not intuitive enough. The hint default font color is light gray that too light, what's more, what you are actually doing is expanding options(if you closed) and then searching for revert button like fishing for a needle in the ocean. In addition, Project Settings and Editor Settings don't have (n changes) hint. This make it difficult to find which settings have been modified among them, that will cause confusion for you when adjusting the old project's Project Settings after a few months or learning Offical/Community Demos, e.g. you really need eagle eyes to find the revert button of some properties e.g. 'default_clear_color' in Rendering/Environment, to notice that they have been adjusted.

Project/Editor Settings no (n changes) hint

Note:
This issue may need to be submitted separately, but since it is highly relevant to this proposal, i place it here. If necessary, I will open a separate issue for it.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Find a better way to make the modified properties in inspector or in Project/Editor Settings clearly visible at a glance, e.g. using conspicuous color to highlight the background/icon/area/fonts of modified properties, similar to setting folder color, or adding something like bookmarks on left side of inspector, or whatever.
Edit:
Just a moment ago, i noticed that Calinou mentioned this point too, you can check this link godotengine/godot#97415 (review).

• Although we merged Make possible to favorite properties in the inspector godot#97415 (related to Implement inspector "Property pinning" #4274) which makes the inspector properties classification more organized, it breaks the relationship between the property and the class it belongs to. From the point of reduz, placing the properties to the top can be beneficial for organization. It makes sense.

• However, sometimes we just want to easily find the modified properties or the properites we want to modify at a glance, it(the above solution) can also achieve the same goal that helping us to easily organize inspector properties, because the favorites are typically inner properties, generally no need to favorite the custom export ones already at the top.

We can combine these two methods to make it easily to manage inspector properties and Project/Editor settings.

Highlight solution will still cause a bit messy when modifying a large number of properties, so I am not sure about the best solution, but it's absolutely useful for hinting modified properties in Project/Editor Settings ...or at least the (n changes) hint should be added to the Project/Editor Settings.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

Highlighting entire/partial background/icon/area:


Similar to:

Note:
default_property should be default_color
number in parentheses represents number of modified properties, or can be omitted

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

This enhancement will actually be used frequently. I'm not sure if a few lines of script can implement it or not.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

It will significantly improve the usability of the editor because the behavior of modifying different properties happens every moment, it absolutely should be core. In addition, if finally choose color highlighting solution, perhaps it should be included in the Theme Settings.