Onboarding experience: "Browse recommended extensions" shows no results

[hawkticehurst]

When completing the welcome/onboarding experience on a brand new Windows machine I was given no recommended extension results.

I'm not fully sure if this should be considered a bug or not (i.e. should there have been extension results on a brand new unconfigured machine?). Regardless of the answer, however, the main feeling was that the lack of any search results disrupted and added confusion to what was an otherwise smooth onboarding experience up to that point.

Issue Type: Bug

0. (You might need a new unconfigured machine?)
1. Run "Developer: Reset Welcome Page Walkthrough Progress"
2. Go to the "Learn the fundamentals" section
3. Go to the "Limitless extensibility" task
4. Click the "Browse Recommended Extensions" button

The Extensions sidebar should open with the search query "[at]recommended" prefilled. In the Workspace Recommendations collapsible panel there should be no results and the text "No extensions found".

Details

VS Code version: Code - Insiders 1.68.0-insider (87630a9122f88f5062fe9964839a92116c274a86, 2022-06-06T17:09:26.575Z) OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.22000 Restricted Mode: No

System Info

|Item|Value| |---|---| |CPUs|11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-11370H @ 3.30GHz (8 x 3302)| |GPU Status|2d_canvas: enabled
canvas_oop_rasterization: disabled_off
direct_rendering_display_compositor: disabled_off_ok
gpu_compositing: enabled
multiple_raster_threads: enabled_on
oop_rasterization: enabled
opengl: enabled_on
rasterization: enabled
raw_draw: disabled_off_ok
skia_renderer: enabled_on
video_decode: enabled
video_encode: enabled
vulkan: disabled_off
webgl: enabled
webgl2: enabled| |Load (avg)|undefined| |Memory (System)|31.84GB (17.20GB free)| |Process Argv|--crash-reporter-id f92bbe85-d251-4567-9fb4-e18928161621| |Screen Reader|no| |VM|0%|

Extensions (6)

Extension|Author (truncated)|Version ---|---|--- vscode-html-css|ecm|1.12.2 python|ms-|2022.7.11581010 vscode-pylance|ms-|2022.6.0 jupyter|ms-|2022.6.1001601017 jupyter-keymap|ms-|1.0.0 jupyter-renderers|ms-|1.0.8

A/B Experiments

``` vsliv695:30137379 vsins829:30139715 vsliv368cf:30146710 vsreu685:30147344 python383cf:30185419 vspor879:30202332 vspor708:30202333 vspor363:30204092 vslsvsres303:30308271 pythonvspyl392:30422396 pythontb:30258533 pythonvspyt551cf:30291413 pythonptprofiler:30281269 vshan820:30294714 pythondataviewer:30285072 vscod805:30301674 bridge0708:30335490 bridge0723:30353136 vsaa593:30376534 pythonvs932:30404738 wslgetstarted:30449409 vscscmwlcmt:30465136 cppdebug:30492333 pylanb8912cf:30496797 vsclangdf:30492506 ```

[daviddossett]

Seems to work on my Mac. Not sure if this is something Windows-specific.

cc @digitarald since you've been working on recommendations recently.

[hawkticehurst]

Yeah, not super sure if it's Windows-specific or just "brand new computer" specific at the moment.

With that said, I will actually be transitioning to using a MacBook in a few weeks as my main work machine (they're on back order right now), so I'll be able to take notes on this (and the entire onboarding process) again and directly compare between Windows and macOS to see if there are any major differences.

[daviddossett]

You can also try a fresh instance of VS Code on any machine if you want. I've added this to my .zshrc:

alias c-empty="rm -fr ~/code_profiles/empty/ && mkdir -p ~/code_profiles/empty/data/User && code --user-data-dir ~/code_profiles/empty/data/User --extensions-dir ~/code_profiles/empty/extensions"

[sandy081]

It seems user has a folder opened and that folder does not has any workspace recommendations.

@hawkticehurst Can you check if there is another view called Other Recommendations under Workspace Recommendations ?

[digitarald]

I assume they are all empty, given that he tested on an "unconfigured machine" There are no indicators on what recommendations should be, as there are no apps to be found or code files in a workspace.

A better empty state that tells users to open a workspace to get recommendations would be nice to fill the void.

But I am curious @hawkticehurst, which extensions would you expect?

[hawkticehurst]

Can you check if there is another view called Other Recommendations under Workspace Recommendations?

At that point in my onboarding process, the Other Recommendations view was not visible. However, after having installed git later in my setup the Other Recommendations view became visible and currently recommends GitLens.

I assume they are all empty, given that he tested on an "unconfigured machine" There are no indicators on what recommendations should be, as there are no apps to be found or code files in a workspace.

Correct. In fact, one of the earlier steps in the onboarding process was to "Open up your code"/"Pick a folder" which in theory should address this lack of a workspace, but because this is a new machine I didn't have any code to load at that point, so I moved on.

I can also anticipate new coders running into this issue too because (in theory) if they're downloading VS Code for the first time to write code they probably don't have anything to load yet. So might be worth thinking about adjusting that onboarding task a bit too.

A better empty state that tells users to open a workspace to get recommendations would be nice to fill the void.

I totally agree, although you still might run into the aforementioned issue of a new machine/new coder not having any code to open yet.

A potential alternative I could envision would be to have a sample project that people could open to get oriented (similar to how a product like Adobe Premiere Pro has a sample video editing project that people can open to get up and running before they have their own footage/assets to edit).

This would need more thought, however, because it could get hairy if you're trying to cater to a wide gamut of programming languages and not wanting to give people the impression that VS Code can only handle a certain subset of languages/types of programming based on a limited number of sample projects if that makes sense?

Which extensions would you expect?

I think I was personally expecting/would love to see three potential things:

• A list of the most popular extensions
• Extensions catered to specific types of development/languages (beyond just the language services themselves)
  • For example, if you're a web developer you might find extensions for React or Svelte support, but if you're an embedded systems dev you might find something like the Arduino or PlatformIO extensions
• A curated (and ever-changing) list of extensions that the core team really enjoy or find helpful (but are not necessarily the most popular extensions)
  • For example, I personally love the es6-string-html extension and am constantly recommending it to people but it isn't the most popular extension by any stretch

At the very minimum, however, I would have expected extensions like the Live Server, Prettier, Remote - SSH, vscode-icons, etc. to be on the list.

[miguelsolorio]

@hawkticehurst did you collapse/expand other views in there? Or hide some? I notice that the workspace view only appears when you have a folder open but that's usually collapsed when there's nothing available and should look like this:

[hawkticehurst]

Nope, I've never seen both views visible at the same time. In fact, I now no longer see the Workspace Recommendations view (although that might be a result of not having any code open yet still??).

[hawkticehurst]

Lol realized I could answer my own question, and yes the Workspace view was not being rendered because I didn't have any code open.

[hawkticehurst]

Also to recap, I think the implications of this are that if you don't have code open you don't get the Workspace recommendations rendered, however, if you don't have git installed then Other Recommendations are seemingly not rendered and it defaults to rendering an empty Workspace Recommendations view?

[sandy081]

Sorry for very delayed response.

Yes, workspace recommendations are not shown when there is no workspace (code) open. There shall be some other recommendations always. May I know if you are not seeing them?

[vscodenpa]

This issue has been closed automatically because it needs more information and has not had recent activity. See also our issue reporting guidelines.

Happy Coding!