microsoft
Reconsider the Sidebar
The "Microsoft Edge Tools" sidebar shows very prominent in VS Code:
However, I think it takes too much space for the functionality it offers and I do think that the functionality it offers can be offered in other places.
One core idea of VS Code is that you have one tool for all tech stacks. I think this sidebar goes against that, by showing a web-dev tool even when the developer works on a non-web-dev project.
When I showed this extension to other users (who casually debug websites), they found the extension extremely cool, but uninstalled later, because the sidebar permanently reminded them that the extension is installed.
As for the targets section, it is not very clear to me what purpose it serves. I think it is reasonable to bind the target to the life-cycle of the webview - the target is created when the user opens a new browser view and it is destroyed when the user closes this web view. The target meta information could be shown in the browser webview somehow.
What user-workflow would require interaction with this section?
"Generate launch.json" could also be offered in the debug pane.
I think the helpful links can all be shown in the editor context menu instead:
These seem like good suggestions. Adding this as an enhancement on our team's backlog for consideration. I would just note that (and you probably already know this of course) the sidebar can always be hidden away, or switch to another tab from the Actibity Bar. And that the extension can be enabled/disabled per project. So if you also work on another projec that's unrelated to web dev, you can disable the extension just for this project.
