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.