Ideas about the Beta snippet tags

[Gazook89]

Your idea:

I was looking at the snippet menus again, and had a couple thoughts:

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I thought about getting the beta tags to be aligned regardless if there is a dropdown menu for the snippet or not.

current	branch

Basically it just sets the 'dropdown caret' on every snippet regardless if there is a dropdown, but visually hides it unless there is a dropdown. This is kind of a 'temporary' approach until more robust components replace these menus.

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I also wondered if the Beta tag could be more useful, somehow? Right now it might leave users wondering what is so 'unfinished' about it? Is it going to break my brew? What if i want to share my experience about it, or an idea? Right now, "beta" doesn't mean anything.

Could the "beta" span actually be a hyperlink to something that gives more info? Like to the github issue where the feature is first mentioned or PR where implementation details are given? Or even just the FAQ, which would have a section about "Beta Features" that talks a little about each one?

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Finally, is there anything that can come out of 'beta' status?

[calculuschild]

Aligning

I agree. Looks good, and your approach sounds fine.

Beta links

No strong opinion. Maybe it opens a popup with details, or just links to a "beta features" page similar to or part of the "FAQ" as you say.

coming out of beta

I think everything can be "un-beta'd" except for Index.

[Gazook89]

Here is what I have for the "links" feature:

My screen capture doesn't show my cursor, but it's on the first 'beta' tag, so it's showing the hover state. And it is just an a href=... which can link to anywhere. I have these three beta tags linked to the #2373 PR. In the future, when we have a feature that is going to be in a "beta" period we could be sure to outline exactly how it works in a way that random users would understand. Then, we would get the permalink for that specific comment and drop it in here.

The URL is just passed as an object to the snippet.experimental object (so it is snippet.experimental.url). It could just be a simple <string> instead, but I figured an object is almost as easy and a little more extensible if we wanted to go crazy.

{
	name         : 'Watercolor Center',
	icon         : 'fac mask-center',
	gen          : ImageMaskGen.center,
	experimental : { url: 'https://github.com/naturalcrit/homebrewery/pull/2373' },
},

And I personally do prefer the underline for hyperlinks, especially if they take the user out of Homebrewery (even if doing so in a new tab, which my branch does). If a "beta" tag is used that has no obvious place to link to, we can leave the link off and it would jsut display without the underline or the :hover color.

[5e-Cleric]

I would not take this route, instead i propose we give them a title attr and write something like this feature might get changes in the upcoming month/patch

[calculuschild]

I'm ok with just a little popup title type thing too.

[Gazook89]

Is there is a reason not do a link? Because we could easily do both.

I like the link because it would open an avenue for greater understanding (“how does this work? Why is it the way it is?”) and for feedback in the most direct way possible.

I also understand that it is an added layer of complexity, one which realistically won’t have much real benefit at this time— it seems unlikely it would elicit lots of additional input from users. Partly because we have a relatively small userbase and only a tiny fraction would ever consider jumping to GitHub to leave a comment.

That could change though.

By giving the link to a snippet PR, we are offering a quick way to find a relevant discussion on a feature that is new-contributor friendly. Snippets are likely the easiest features to get started with (in my opinion), especially so when the concept has already been approved and we are just deciding on implementation. The direct link between feature and discussion shows a concrete path from ideation to production.

99% of users maybe don’t need any additional info— not even a tooltip, which many likely won’t even know to hover for— but for 1% it seems worth considering.

But— if we don’t want the few extra lines of code, that’s cool too.

[5e-Cleric]

What would you write in such a page? couldn't just write that info in the FAQ?

[Gazook89]

It would just link to the existing discussion on GitHub. For example, the watercolor snippets would link to #2373

no new pages or tidbits in the FAQ need to be created. Any PR for snippets should already have a clear explanation of what it does. It’s possible to even link to a specific comment in a PR thread.