Layout Controls: move them to respective corners

[bpasero]

An idea from @sbatten to split up our layout controls into respective controls per corner:

I.e. have them appear at the corners where the view or panel is.

Probably drop the layout picker button.

[sbatten]

Just for completeness, posting some thoughts here:

We now allow showing the custom title bar when using the native title bar, but without it, these controls are not found, nor is the copilot chat icon. In addition, we have the ability to move the activity bar global actions to the title bar with different activity bar positions. I would love to see a world where the layout actions are closer to the side bar they toggle as well as put the other actions in a consolidated toolbar on the right including chat, accounts, settings.

On a separate thought, if users don't want the title bar to house layout controls, we could theoretically start moving these to editor and panel parts based on the current layout. Very cheap mockup

[viswatejan]

I use both primary and secondary sidebars, and I usually place the icons on the top as shown below:

It will be great to have an option to always show the icons of the primary and secondary sidebars (may be vertically) even after hiding the bars. That way it will be handy to open a specific section from the sidebars instead of unhiding the specific sidebar and clicking on the specific icon.

[bpasero]

I noticed that layout controls have a setting toggle (workbench.layoutControl.type) that hides the layout picker and makes it imho look quite nice:

I am pushing a change to make that the new default.

In addition, if activity bar is top, I am moving the layout actions all the way to the right:

This is still not what this FR asks for, but a step closer imho.

Let me know if you have any objections.

[sbatten]

I actually use the toggles only setting. I just never had the guts to update the default. 👍🏻

As for moving the icons around, I use Activity Bar on bottom, so this won't impact me? Either way, I don't think it really does much for me either way, these icons are so small and on windows the window controls are farthest right. IMO this change is just noisy UI change in lieu of a proper solution.

[bpasero]

IMO this change is just noisy UI change in lieu of a proper solution.

What is "this change" you refer to?

[sbatten]

@bpasero moving the layout controls to the far right. I don't think it is a bad change, I'm just not sure it helps much and might be strange for users that the icons are moving around.

[bpasero]

@sbatten but when we talk about moving layout controls to their respective corners, isn't that part of it? Now the secondary sidebar toggle is actually to the far right, as much as possible.

I am not 100% convinced anymore that all controls should move to their respective locations, specifically for the panel: it can be configured to be top, left or right. In that case having it in the status bar would actually not be the right "corner" 🤔

[abhijit-chikane]

My only concern is the icon.
I placed my panel on the right side, but icon highlight shows me it is on the bottom. I have already mentioned it here.

Additionally, I would really love for the secondary sidebar to have Activity Bar support, as already discussed here.

Now Edge also support this kind of behavior and It really helps.

Currently, for Copilot, we have added a dedicated button near the Command Center. However, for someone who uses a different AI assistant, or like me, who uses multiple assistants, it becomes very difficult to navigate between the different menus, as mentioned in this comment. Furthermore, even within Copilot, we now have two menus—Chat and Edit—so I believe it makes even more sense to have a dedicated Activity Bar.

[benibenj]

@bpasero I think we should move the actions to their respective corners. For the scenario you mentioned where the panel is not at the bottom, we can move the toggle panel action to the title bar on the respective side. If we decide to not move the actions to their corners, then I believe we should move back to what we had before.

I'm fine if we remove the layout picker if the actions move to their respective corners, but otherwise, I think we should make it visible. This is an actions which is meant to help new users discover the different ways how the layout can be configured. If we hide it, we might as well remove it entirely (the action button, there could still be a different entry point to the menu dropdown)

[abhijit-chikane]

Can we leverage the existing behavior of changing the split editor icon when the Alt button is pressed?

In other words, before pressing Alt, the button displays a vertical splitter icon.

When the Alt button is held down, the icon changes to represent a horizontal splitter.

Can we not use the same for panel button?
and if the panel is at the bottom we can use it in status/title bar

[mlntr]

For the panel, I find the layout controls location to be in such an inconvenient place (the top is opposite side to where the panel is) that I never use it for opening the panel (instead I resort to clicking the 'problems' button on the status bar, then click again to go to terminal/whatever)

So this would be a welcome change.