🎉 Node-RED 5 now available

[Colin]

Another small issue with the script, or actually the service file. There should be a line defaulting NODE_RED_OPTIONS to an empty string
Environment="NODE_RED_OPTIONS="

Without that line this warning is shown when the service is started
nodered.service: Referenced but unset environment variable evaluates to an empty string: NODE_RED_OPTIONS

Possibly also take out the max_old_space node options at the same time, changing that line to
Environment="NODE_OPTIONS="

[Trying_to_learn]

1:
I've read and like the sorting of the link nodes.
By name not time made.

But one thing I think would be nice is a find option.

(Ok, I guess if they are sorted by name, finding a link by name may be moot.)

2:
The documents help option for a node.
I am using a new node and am not familiar with what it wants.
I click on the node and open the documents help to see the stuff.

I then want to edit a function node (for example) to construct the required message format.

But as soon as I do that the help window changed to the function node's help.

It would be nice if you could lock the help to the original node so you keep the new/useful/needed information visible as you are working in/on other nodes.

[gregorius]

Using foreign plugins can cause hanging scrollbars:

Here I've started NR5, the 'i' panel is shown by default. I switch to a foreign plugin panel (the layout in this case) and I then reload the browser. After reload, I'm left with a hanging scrollbar that then, when I select the 'i' panel, makes sense.

EDIT:

Another scrollbar related issue is that there seems to be no scroll bars for plugin content when the debug panel is opened:

The debug panel is open and the top half is the plugin panel. For the inbuilt plugins, there is a scrollbar to scroll up and down, for the foreign ones there isn't a scrollbar (hard to see but I'm actually scrolling in the animation).

I assume this has to do with some HTML-voodoo (some css class not being added to the divs). Are there new guidelines for creating plugins dialogs? Is there a go-to plugin that does this out of the box that one can copy? Use overflow-y: auto on the outermost div.

EDIT2:

Added overflow-y: auto fix.

[Steve-Mcl]

@gregorius

Here I've started NR5, the 'i' panel is shown by default. I switch to a foreign plugin panel (the layout in this case) and I then reload the browser. After reload, I'm left with a hanging scrollbar that then, when I select the 'i' panel, makes sense.

I spotted this once (in last beta) but could never recreate it and assumed it was my baulked env (running from source with local inflight modifications) since it never came back.
Now you have also witnessed this - something aint right.
Can I trouble you to open an issue please? Include the steps and requirements to make it happen too.

Thanks.

[gregorius]

Done: NR5: Hanging Scrollbars when switching plugin panels and reloading browser · Issue #5802 · node-red/node-red · GitHub

[gregorius]

Ok, you got me - overall I have to say that the features of NR5 are nice - better zoom and having four different places for panels is great. It's a smidgen faster than 4 and that makes the overall experience a lot more snappy. (And bringing back the click-to-close-and-save feature - yeah!)

I'm just going through upgrading my plugins and overall, it's straight forward and no major headaches - most of my weird editor changes seem to be working as suspected.

Ironically this will probably make NR more over a dashboard than ever before

Good job, level up! As they say ...

[gregorius]

There has been a change to the TreeList widget:

It now takes a second click to open a list of children in the list. In NR4 (the orange highlight), one click does a highlight and expands the children list. In NR5 (blue highlight), that now takes two clicks: one to add the highlight and second click to expand the children list.

This is of course perhaps intended but it's still irritating since it feels wrong being used to the original behaviour.

(the animation didn't always capture the second click but its definitely there - animate gif conversion is to blame.)

[knolleary]

There was a change to let a TreeList instance declare if it should expand on one or two clicks; when testing the Explorer sidebar, having it expand a flow's list of nodes when you were just trying to navigate it was unhelpful.

I thought I had made the change opt-in - so existing treelists wouldn't have been affected. Can you raise an issue?

[gregorius]

@knolleary

I thought I had made the change opt-in

I'm using an old settings.js, i.e. a NR4 so I might not have that setting - if it's in the settings.js

@knolleary

Can you raise an issue?

Can do

[knolleary]

@knolleary

I thought I had made the change opt-in

I meant at the code API level - not user level.

[gregorius]

@knolleary

I meant at the code API level

Ah ok, in that case QED for me --> Issue --> NR5: opening TreeList now takes two clicks by default · Issue #5803 · node-red/node-red · GitHub

[gregorius]

Sorry ... another bug perhaps:

Scrollbars don't update if iterating over nodes in the same flow tab. Here the scrollbar on the right should be updated when I iterate over search results in the same tab. I have the feeling that the scroll bars are only set correctly if the search results move across flow tabs.

In the animation, need to keep an eye on the flow tab and the scroll bar on the right. Looking closely, the scroll bars are only updated if the tab is change. Even when moving across the flow, if it's the same tab, the scroll bars aren't updated.

EDIT:

also after a resize:

EDIT2:

In the palette manager:

"0 plugins" should in fact be "1 plugin" - those packages that have plugins have zero of them and those that have no plugins, have just 1 or more nodes ....

[PizzaProgram]

@knolleary

No. Node-RED 5 will refuse to run on anything prior to 22. There are simply too many security issues with old versions of dependencies that we had to move up the baseline.

In that case the editor should not notify users running prior Node.js v22 that :
v5.0.0 is available.
(I've just got a popup like that after pressed Ctrl + F5 in my FFox.)

Or at least it should not allow to try auto-update if it will fail anyway on pre v22 / Win7 .
Is there any auto-failsafe test for that?

[gregorius]

One more thing that I notice was that there is no longer a buffer between edge of workspace and edge of browser, NR4:

(ignore the image that happens to be attached to the node - this would also happen to nodes)

The same in NR5 then has the navigation helpers overlayed and also the scrollbars:

I know this is an edge case but it basically means that of the 8000x8000, about 50 px bottom and to the right are non-usable. Any content located at the very bottom or very right will have the scrollbars going over it.

If the controls (i.e. scrollbars and navigation helpers) would simply disappear (much like the dock on macos that can hide by itself) then this is won't be an issue.

[RoustamManookian]

The best feature that I was waiting for is the "Debug pause". Thanks !!!

[jbudd]

Not sure if this has been reported before.

With the left hand sidebar visible, edit a function, open the extended editor. It overlays the sidebar.

Now when the mouse is positioned over the right hand edge of the sidebar, the cursor changes to the left/right arrow & clicking/dragging no longer selects text in the editor.
Instead it resizes the underlying sidebar.

[GogoVega]

You must call RED.plugins.registerPlugin(...) to register a plugin.

[gregorius]

@GogoVega

RED.plugins.registerPlugin(...)

Ah ok, so there is a difference between sidebar, plugins and nodes (config & workspace)? But why does it show "0 plugins" at all, for example, tarball does not have a sidebar nor plugin and nothing is shown:

NodeDev has a plugin directory and in that directory there is a sidebar defined (which is also shown as a sidebar). In the package.json it's declared as a plugin but in fact there are two plugins defined - one is just init code.

Indeed registerPlugin isn't called by NodeDev, instead a RED.sidebar.addTab is called.