Settings editor backlog

[roblourens]

💯 - @JacksonKearl
🤖 - @roblourens
✋ - Blocked (on 54039)
👁 - UX investigation
🐛 - bug-level change
❓ - Needs discussion or dev investigation

This is the master tracking issue for remaining settings editor tasks 🎉

Needs decisions made

• ❓💯 Show setting enumDescriptions inside new dropdown control #55796 - New dropdown
• 👁 Settings editor: provide context menu actions #54140 - Context menu or gear button (like extension viewlet)
• 👁 Explore how setting categories are formatted #55800 - Category format

Opening

• 🤖 Settings: folder/workspace settings tab should hide settings that cannot be applied #50641 - Handle user/workspace/folder scoped settings correctly
  • The EditorInput must resolve to the setting model for the right scope
  • Maybe goes along with Fix settings search to not be implemented via an ITextModel #55792
• 🐛 Remember user preference of showing keybinds.json and settings.json #55375 - Add commands for opening the UI, .json, the setting-configured version
  • And decide on command IDs. Currently we only have workbench.action.openSettings2

Search/filter

• 🤖 Show modified should render the results similar to a search #55616 - "filter" mode should look like "search" mode
• 🤖 Settings: typing a 100% perfect match on settings ID should only show that one setting #50652 - exact key match should show just that setting
  • json editor does this, do the same for new editor
• 👁💯 Settings editor should show "no results" when searching #55615 - show "no results" message when search returns no results

General UX

• 🤖 Change "modified" text to change indicator bar #56612 - Change "modified" text to indicator bar
• 💯 Intellisense in settings editor search bar for available filters #55804 - Intellisense for filters in search bar
• 🤖 Settings editor scrollbar should be along far right edge #55795 - Scrollbar should be on far right edge

Table of contents

• ✋ Settings Editor: Weird logic in up/down #55527 - Up/down navigation weirdness from syncing selection state btw trees
  • Settings Editor: Clicking behavior is not consistent #55528 probably the same
• 🐛 Remove TOC search behavior modes besides 'filter' #53120 - Remove search modes besides 'filter'

Setting row UX

• 🐛 Settings editor is slow to refresh #56296 - Slow refresh
• 🐛 Settings editor - show full description all the time #55797 - Show full setting description
• 🐛 Respect markdownDescription vs description in settings editor #55478 - Respect description vs markdownDescription and update all settings accordingly
• 🐛 Links in settings descriptions don't work for search results #55179 - Setting links don't work during search
• ✋ Setting checkbox label should be clickable #54053 - Bool setting label should be clickable
  • Makes sense once settings are no longer expandable
• 🐛 Setting links should use UI-formatted names #55695 - Setting links should use the formatted name, not the key
• 🐛Can't activate focused links in settings editor with <enter> #56020 - Can't activate focused links with <enter>

Setting schema

• ❓ Explore extending settings schema with additional metadata #51778 - Extending setting schema for extensions
  • Maybe let extensions add settings to groups

Controls

• 💯 New settings editor should work for some compound setting types #55794 - Support some compound setting types like null | something
• ❓ Settings: Make form controls consistent in shapes and alignment #50704 - Square corners vs rounded corners, platform-specific, probably a larger issue
• 💯 Setting validation in new settings editor #55801 - Validation
  • 💯 settings UI: show deprecated settings when set #55646 - Show deprecated settings with some hint
• 🤖 Show settings search matches from non-installed extensions #49474 - Button to see search results from other extensions

Other

• 🤖 Settings editor UI is slow to update and sometimes renders out of date values #55803 - Settings editor UI is slow to update and sometimes renders out of date values

Accessibility

• 👉👉👉 Settings UI list should be focusless #54039 - Decide once and for all, do we keep the model of "selecting" setting rows for navigation? It makes some things more complicated and maybe is not "typical", but is a very efficient way to navigate once you are used to it. Affects many other things.
  • If the point of the new settings editor is to be immediately familiar to new users, then maybe this model is too unexpected, judging by some feedback.
• 🐛 Settings: NVDA should not read out links as "clickable" #52464 - "clickable"
• 🐛 Settings editor - TOC and settings list tab order reversed #55799 - Trees have wrong tab order

??

• 🐛 Toggling sidebar switches away from settings editor #54280 - Opening the explorer switches away from the settings editor to the selected file

More issues

• Settings editor links should have underline on hover #56928 - Underline links on hover
• Show a notification the first time a user changes a setting - Show notification when editing settings in UI for the first time #57033
• Change modified indicator ::after to real element so it can have a tooltip
• Move 'reset setting' to the top of the context menu and remove "Copy Name"
• Optimize settings list layout by loading elements in pages
• Add commands that implement "Focus next/previous setting control". e.g. cmd+down skips other focusable elements and focuses the next setting control in the list.
• Persist the order of rows in the exclude control across edits.