Suggestions for UX Improvements: Plotting and Panel Management

[AltoBluedot]

I love Positron, it is the best IDE ever. However, I believe there are UX improvements possible here and there. What are your thoughts on the following:

1. Plotting: Default View Setting

   1. Issue: Python-generated plots (e.g., from Matplotlib or plotnine) do not default to the "Auto" scaling view in the plot pane. This requires users to manually select "Auto" for each new plot to ensure it scales correctly.
   2. Suggestion: Add a global setting in Preferences to allow users to set the default scaling mode (e.g., "Auto") for all new plots.

2. Plotting: Persistence for Detached Plot Window UI

   1. Issue: When opening a plot in a new window (using "Open editor in new Window"), the navigation toolbar is shown by default. The user's preference for hiding this bar (via the maximise icon) is not saved, requiring it to be hidden manually every time.
   2. Suggestion: Remember the visibility state of the navigation bar across new plot windows. A dedicated setting to "Default to maximised view for new plot windows" would be a good idea?

3. Panel and Sidebar UI/UX

   1. Toggle to Minimise: Clicking the active tab in the Panel's navigation bar (e.g., "Terminal," "Console") should minimise the Panel. This provides a fast, intuitive workflow for opening, using, and closing the panel. This behaviour could also apply to sidebars when docked horizontally.

   2. Contextual Panel Buttons: The Panel title bar displays "Maximise" and "Restore" buttons simultaneously, but these are mutually exclusive states. Only the relevant button should be displayed at a time (i.e., show "Maximise" when in the default state, and "Restore" when maximised).

   3. UI Customisation (Button Visibility): The title bars for the Panel and other panes contain many icons. Provide an option (e.g., in settings or a right-click context menu) to hide unused buttons. This would reduce visual clutter and prevent mis-clicks.

   4. Icon Consistency: The icons for "Maximise" (in the Panel), "Expand" (in the Secondary Sidebar), and "Hide Toolbar" (in the detached plot window) are functionally similar but visually distinct. Unifying these icons would improve UI consistency. Please.

4. Navigation bar Customisation

   1. Enable an option for the bottom Activity Bar to display text labels (similar to the Panel navbar) instead of only icons.
   2. Conversely, consider an option for an icon-only mode for the secondary sidebar to allow for user preference.

I hope this is interesting. Please leave any ideas you have below.

I have written this from the perspective of a fairly casual user, I do Systems biology-related tasks from training simple MLPs in Python TF, to data analysis in R. I plot with plotnine and ggplot. I usually use M+KB over just shortcuts, and I work on a Mac M4 Air (lowest config.). I do not use notebooks, just raw files for each part of the workflow. This makes it easy to make them into modules for Python and R.

Positron always works very smoothly and is by far the best IDE for Data Science I have used (and I tried RStudio, Jupyter Lab in browser localhost via mamba, VSCode, and the online version of Posit). The main advantage is the plotting functionality, and the session tab generally is very useful. I wish the preview function of data frames was even better, lol, but I don't know how...

[travis-leith]

To add to this, I would like to move the AI chat to the right. This is because I often need to manage the context of the AI with specific files. This is much easier if the file explorer and the chat are both visible at the same time.

[juliasilge]

Thank you so much for these detailed thoughts, @AltoBluedot! 🙌

1. I believe we are tracking this feature request in Add configurable setting for plot sizing policy #7268. Want to take a look and see if you agree? Perhaps add a 👍 or additional info if so?

2. I am not understanding what you mean by this one. Can you share a screenshot showing what you are meaning, especially "hiding this bar via the maximize icon"?

3. I think I understand these points, and I don't believe we have anything like this logged yet. We can track interest in those here, or feel free to open a feature request issue, especially with some screenshots indicating the parts of the UI you are talking about.

4. On this one, again I am not quite understanding what part of the UI you are suggesting changes for. A screenshot would be great!

@travis-leith You can drag the chat window over to the secondary side bar, like this:

[AltoBluedot]

For 1., thank you very much, I have upvoted that request also.

For 3., please see above. I am talking about these buttons on the image highlighted in red, top-right of the console. The rightmost buttons (restore and maximise, latter in blue) should be shown only one-at-a-time, since you cannot restore a restored window (as is the case here). And the navigation bar of the Panel (the Console, Terminal, Output in yellow), when I press Console when Console is already selected, I would expect the Panel to fold to be minimised (as if triggering the minimise function from the button). I would also expect the other (yellow in image) bars to be able to minimise in the same way when pressed when they are at the bottom or top of the workspace, that way more space for the code can be made.

Additionally, I would like to be able to hide many of these buttons as shown in red on the image (except minimise) so that it is easier to press minimise when needed (as I may need to reopen and close the console many times in a short period). I would also like to be able to right-click and hide (some of) the buttons highlighted in green on the UI.

And by the way, that bar containing the R and Py sessions (below these buttons) does not remember the width the user sets after restarting. It would be fun if it did. 🥲

For 4., an example configuration above, imagine the user wants to see icons in the bottom-left (in this case) activity panel (or the centre panel), or text instead of icons on the bottom-right (all highlighted in yellow on image). They cannot yet currently do that in VSCode, nor in Positron...

When referring to the icon style of maximise, I was talking about the icons highlighted in blue in the image. They do the same thing (maximise window), but they look different. I don't think this makes sense, but I could be wrong here.

Finally, please see below for 2., I would like Positron to always open my plotting window as shown in the second image below, and open new plotting windows in separate window groups, and not as shown in the first image below. Also, please note another strange-looking maximise button, which does not fit with the previous one... perhaps the one highlighted in red on the 1st image should be replaced by the ones highlighted only in blue?

I realise these are extremely picky UX / QC remarks. They may also not be useful for everyone's workflow, as I rearranged my IDE heavily to suit me better. However, I think they may be good to know about and implement eventually, when possible, since they may benefit every user (everyone may want to hide some buttons to make navigation easier if they do not use them often). This would make Positron feel like a very polished product, even better than VSCode. Thank you. 😄

P.S. One more bonus tiny UX thing - the empty bar (above the purple line I made in the image) in the scrollable view that shows all variables, there is a tiny bit of whitespace / padding there that I think should not be as far as I can tell?

[juliasilge]

Thank you so much! I opened two issues for the pieces of this that I think would be quite doable:

• Polish buttons on panel action bar #10084
• Provide a user setting to control compact mode for "Open in new window" for plots #10085

We can track interest in some of the other, more minor points here in this discussion.