858282 - Simulator: Permanent sidebar

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Developer Ecosystem :: Web Components, defect)

Description

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Prototype a permanent (but hideable) Simulator sidebar.

(This is from the same design draft as bug 858277).

The idea is to have the Simulator tools (dashboard, simulator itself, devkit tools) available at your fingertips while you're developing, but you should be able to hide that thing too to focus on your task at hand.

Comment 1

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

One thing I don't think we've answered yet is the interaction to showing and hiding the simulator/devkit altogether? If there's a "tab" you can click to show the sidebar, that's handy if your current "mode" is development, but if you're casually reading your email on a Sunday you don't need it quite that available.

Tony: Do you have a suggestion for that? Right now, the simulator dashboard is a browser tab that you can just close. Moving to a global sidebar will need some other logic to switch from "open or collapsed sidebar" to "the sidebar isn't there at all".

Comment 2

[Tony Santos [:tsmuse]]

I haven't had a lot of time to think through this thoroughly yet, but in the spirit of fostering a creative discussion about it here, I'll share my initial thoughts:

* The way the Firefox Dev tools hide and come back is what triggered the idea of having the simulator dashboard hide and comeback in the first place. Even as a part-time dev, I tend to leave that little strip of the developer toolbar up in my FF window all the time because it's so unobtrusive. 

* Devs (usually having both hands on the keyboard) are more prone to use a keyboard shortcut that other types of users, as long as it's not so convoluted that they can't remember it

* Personally, I think a hamburger style menu on the right or left side of the browser + keyboard shortcut would be a sexy solution to this problem, but it may not be practical, and I don't know if it's even possible. It's just how I'd do it if I was designing it for me. 

* Firebug solves this problem by letting devs add the firebug button to the toolbar. This is good because it's right there at the top (or where ever it gets dragged in the UI) but that space is fact becoming over crowded. That being said, the Web Developer Tools menu is already 11 items long (including the current version of FFOS Simulator) and that's just on my copy of Firefox where the only developer add-ons I have are Firebug and the simulator, so it's crowded in the menu too. 

Hope that helps keep things moving on the prototyping end of things. I don't really have a solution yet.

Comment 3

[Potch [:potch]]

Tony, there's a lot of meat on them bones :) I'll prototype a few of those ideas out and we can play with them and see how they feel.

Comment 4

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Done from our side, and now in the capable hands of a dedicated team in the Devtools group.