Quick Start - Floating/Docking

[heyethankim]

Requesting new features, enhancements, or design changes to PatternFly

Now we are introducing multi-cluster switcher for 4.10 and customers can navigate through ACM from OCP. This may lead customers to have 5 (?) different columns.

Although the example above is not following the pattern defined in PatterFly, floating the Quick Start may give customers flexibility without losing any context. The Quick Start modal is also draggable. Here is the prototype:

https://marvelapp.com/prototype/2f3he016/screen/86948554

[andybraren]

A related feature may be the ability to pop the Quick Start / in-context Help drawer out into its own separate tab/window to be placed onto another screen or made larger without taking up additional in-window space. Basically like a target="_blank". Not sure if there's an existing open enhancement idea for that. Maybe the icon for that behavior could be fa-external-link-alt.

[andybraren]

A good example of the floating behavior Ethan described: in Google Cloud Platform, clicking "View help FAQs" displays a movable window that persists across the Console.

[heyethankim]

User research (07-2022) Quick Start Floating/Docking (2:11)

As the last person pointed out, we are curious to know how they would react to a separate browser window. Would there be any preference there? Another thing we could consider is, as the 3rd person pointed out, the interaction between the contents and Quick Start. Right now it is pretty manual process. Is Quick Start going to somehow follow along, when floated, with the steps? Or does it make more sense when it is a separate browser window if we are going to present relevant info? ACM is the only product having UI and YAML side by side. The question is if it is helpful at all? This may be not be so related to floating/docking functionality. Worth investigating to figure out if it is necessary to keep it this way.

Plan to do a comparison test between floating modal vs. separate browser window.

[jschuler]

Great design, thank you! @jessiehuff we should discuss prioritization of this feature

[jessiehuff]

Definitely curious on your thoughts on it @jschuler! 🙂 I talked to Ethan about this one and we presented it in a Quick Starts meeting and a Design Share. I believe that Ethan also did some research around this feature as well. The general feedback I got was that others thought it could be nice to have, but we didn't hear any solid commitment or initiation to get it in their products, so it's been lower on the priority list at the moment. If we have a product who backs it and wants to get it in though, I think we can definitely revisit the prioritization!

[jessiehuff]

Ethan ended up tackling this issue differently using the full screen which could be a more robust solution: https://marvelapp.com/prototype/iei7bae/screen/88444121 I think it would make sense to close this issue for now unless we determine that the previous request is still needed.