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sourcegraph / sourcegraph-public-snapshot

Code AI platform with Code Search & Cody
https://sourcegraph.com
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Make the VSCE experience feel more native to VS Code #30207

Open jjinnii opened 2 years ago

jjinnii commented 2 years ago

Feature request description

Based on internal feedback, the current implementation of the extension feels not native to VS Code. This is a result of using Sourcegraph UI components, pulled in from webview, instead of utilizing VS Code's native UI elements. As a user of VS Code, I like and appreciate when my extensions feel native and seamless to my editor.

It is our hypothesis that improving the "native" integration of our extension will improve recurring usage.

Describe alternatives you've considered.

@olafurpg's original version of the extension utilized notebooks to create a search experience that felt very native to VS Code. However, the team moved forward with a Webview implementation based on the technical restrictions that came with notebooks as well as QuickPick.

Additional context

User testing also uncovered that just exposing the Sourcegraph search input field (even if it looks "native" to vS Code) makes it extremely difficult for users who are new to Sourcegraph to understand how to use the extension. There was a user need here to onboard and teach users about Sourcegraph and how to use the extension, within the extension itself.

Based on this:

jjinnii commented 2 years ago

Relevant internal thread on VS Code's new webview UI toolkit. @tjkandala @abeatrix is this essentially a "component library" that looks/feels VS Code native? Would it be possible for us to plug and play here with our current implementation? i.e. replace an input field with a component from this toolkit, for example.

philipp-spiess commented 2 years ago

@jjinnii Hey Sara! We're currently triaging old issues and came across this one and are unsure how to proceeded. What is your suggestion? Is this still a big enough issue for us to work on? How much did the last minute VS Code theming effort help here?