[Console Editor] Surface "Run Selected Code" feature

[nchevobbe]

Related:

• PRD
• Implementation bug

Since you can select only what's currently selected on the input, we might want to reflect that in the UI to indicate to the user that we'll do a specific action.

Ideas so far:

• Changing the run button text to Run Selected Code
• Changing the run button tooltip
• Changing the run button style (e.g. background-color could match the background color of selected text)
• Adding an inline icon after the selection

[juliandescottes]

Another idea:

• the Run button always runs the whole code, but we add a context menu option on the selected text "Run the selected text"

[violasong]

I like Julian's idea, but I think I need to learn more about this feature. I googled "Run selected code" to see how other editors do it (e.g. VSCode) and it did involve a separate shortcut or context menu. But perhaps this feature is more relevant for a browser tool, where you might be doing more experimentation?

Keeping this in a context menu makes this feature less exposed and less discoverable, but is that a problem?

• E.g. Do we know how popular this is, compared to the need to select text for overwriting/copying?
• Is there a certain use case where this is really helpful? Do we actually want to encourage use of this feature to help people be more efficient?

I guess the idea behind a "scratchpad" is you can write a bunch of variations of some code and test execution of each one in succession. Is this a lot more convenient than just running all the variations of the code at once? Would people use this to jot down non-executable info, or partially-written code, which they don't want to run?

cc: @digitarald @fvsch

[violasong]

Florens mentioned on slack:

A design pattern used by some news sites is to show floating buttons near the selection. E.g. tweeting the selected text as a quote + link. I kinda hate it to be honest (mostly because I don't need it so it just gets in the way), but it does have the advantage of making the feature more explicit.

I noticed Slack suddenly does this which I find very intense, especially with inline documentation for markdown formatting right under there, but at least it does teach you the shortcuts.

[fvsch]

Oooh are we planning Cmd+Shift+Enter to run the selected text maybe?

[violasong]

We definitely should if indeed we hide this into a menu :)

[digitarald]

Do we know how popular this is

No. It was a top-level feature in Scratchpad but did not come up in recent comments (compared to other benefits if Scratchpad. It can be a convenience to iterate on larger snippets – but we have to expose it enough to get feedback.

Overall I like the idea of a new button+shortcut to run the selected text or the current line/statement. We have enough room for "Run Selection". This would give us enough signal if people do use it, or if we should make it less prominent.

Other considerations:

Jupiter iPython Notebooks have a Run Cell pattern that is similar here. Output is shown directly below, so its not 100% comparable (closer to Scratchpad). They offer:

Related, Scratchpad worded this as "Display", as it does not just evaluate the current line but also displays the output. This was mostly due to the fact that Scratchpad did not output the result from the last expression; which editor mode does as it acts as console input.

Next year, eager evaluation can also provide in-context preview for output from some lines.

[nchevobbe]

Actually this did come up in a discussion I had with Irakli in Whistler. He was saying it was very handy when you're working on a big script ( = you want to debug only a specific part of it without wiping out everything you wrote). A specific shortcut sounds good to me + maybe some hint, somewhere (still don't know where :D )

[fvsch]

A specific shortcut sounds good to me + maybe some hint, somewhere (still don't know where :D )

We could:

• tell about this shortcut in the welcome message
• treat the welcome message as a kind of mini-help, and let users show it again via a "(?)" button in the toolbar

[violasong]

Maybe an easy option for now is: If you select some code and hit cmd-enter or click the run button, the output starts with the explanatory line: "Running selected code:"

[violasong]

I do like the idea of adding this to the welcome message, if we want to encourage its usage.

[digitarald]

I do like the idea of adding this to the welcome message, if we want to encourage its usage.

Yes. Having some visual feedback when selecting text that execution mode changes (or a new one is available) would be great to encourage discovery (for anybody who did not read the onboarding, especially).