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Replace kernel toolbar with a compact component on the menu toolbar

Open novoselt opened this issue 1 year ago • 3 comments

The current view: image my claim is that half of the vertical space here is wasted!

What information does the lower "kernel toolbar" convey? Is it necessary? Does it need a lot of space?

  • kernel type icon - nice to have, compact
  • kernel title - not really needed to be visible all the time, takes a bit of space
  • kernel status icon - very useful, compact
  • trusted status - how important it is in CoCalc context? how many users actually understand what it means? I've read about it, but no longer remember the details, I doubt that more than 1% of users care, yet it does take space
  • kernels status as text perhaps with a link to affect its state - nice to have, but may take a lot of space, with the animated status icon and possibility to put extra info/actions into a dropdown or hover over, I do not think it is necessary at all
  • CPU usage - very useful, but can convey as much information using one inch of space instead of 5, and even the label "CPU" does not have to be shown - just explain it on hover!
  • RAM usage - same as for CPU, and these two can be stacked vertically, especially if labels are removed

So my own designer opinion is that the whole bar can be replaced with

  • kernel type icon
  • kernel status icon
  • stacked CPU/RAM gauges

It will take about as much space as "TimeTravel" button and can be placed into the right on the menu bar. Keep the same hover over for this component as presently for most of the elements of this bar.

This is similar in spirit to what Colab does, so I am not the only one with such a preference ;-)

novoselt avatar Feb 04 '24 19:02 novoselt

kernel title - not really needed to be visible all the time, takes a bit of space

I'm not sure I agree with this. E.g., I was just debugging an issue and the solution was that the user had changed the kernel from one version of Python to another and that broke everything. This immediately jumped out at me because the full kernel name is visible. On Colab this is obviously far less important, because they have only two kernels (which they call "Runtime Type"):

image

williamstein avatar Feb 07 '24 23:02 williamstein

Where is the best place to discuss toolbar-related issues? I am looking for how to control the output scroll bars (previously Cell->Output->Toggle scrolled). I can't find this any more. Should I open a new issue, or is there a place for listing feedback on the new UI? (I saw the PR, but there is no discussion there.) (Also, when did the default figure size get so big that it needs to disable the scroll bars?)

mforbes avatar Feb 08 '24 00:02 mforbes

Make a new issue. In this particular case, that functionality should be in the section of edit next to Collapse and Expand, with a new section called Scrolled, but it got dropped by accident.

WORKAROUND: "Help --> All Keyboard Shortcuts and Commands..." has all commands. Search for scrolled there and you can still run the command that way by clicking on it. Also the keyboard shortcut to toggle this for selected cells is shift+O:

image

Also, output is now scrolled by default, to align with a design change made by upstream Jupyter.

williamstein avatar Feb 08 '24 00:02 williamstein