Make none-pinned language status items more prominent

[jrieken]

Here is a suggestion about the visibility, sorry for disturbing. 🙂

We find abnormal severity (error or warning) for unpinned status (which is the default behavior) is not easy to find, compared to the pinned item.

pinned error:

unpinned error:

Users will find the status easier for the pinned item than the unpinned item, since the background is different. Can we consider changing the background color of the pinned item as well? (or another way to help users find this status)

Originally posted by @CsCherrYY in #129037 (comment)

[jrieken]

This is about warning and error states but it also came up with default severities

[daviddossett]

This is about warning and error states but it also came up with default severities

Does that mean there has been feedback that it's difficult to notice the language status in the first place? I.e. with no warning or error?

[jrieken]

I.e. with no warning or error?

Yeah, my understanding is that that was part of the python/powershell confusion. Users don't really notice the {} icon. One idea was to animate it a little whenever any of its items changed

[daviddossett]

Ah, right. So essentially when something changes, but isn't a warning or error, we need some indication of that happening.

I can think of a few approaches here. I think the main challenge will be making it something accessible if it involves any sort of visual ping. Adding to next milestone.

[andyleejordan]

We could also default to pinning the language status items (or allowing extensions to opt-in to default pin setting).

[jrieken]

@andschwa That's not part of this discussion and something we currently don't plan for

[andyleejordan]

It's definitely relevant, as the core issue is that extensions that have opted into the new API (like we did with PowerShell) now have their icons hidden by default, and therefore not prominent. We have users complaining about this and it's still in our extension's preview channel 🤷