Since the note icon was added above nodes on the workspace, I suspect (hope) folk are now more aware of the fact that useful documentation can be added to every node.
A few of downsides for me personally are:
I need to either click the note icon to see what it says
When i do go to the effort of clicking it, I am context switched away from my focus to a semi-modal editor tray
It is shown as raw markdown - which is super handy if I want to edit it, not so handy for reading
If I do want to see rendered documentation, I need to open the info panel!
Proposal 1
Lets also support groups! They can have useful info too.
Flow Tabs (workspace tabs) are a worthy contender too, but they have other considerations (they are not part of the workspace SVG) so out of scope initially
Proposal 2
Why not just render the info content as in a popover - I just want to glance it, not edit it!
Outcome
wanna see the rendered info contextually beside the node? - hover the note icon (new)
wanna get to the editor to fix it up - click the note icon (no change)
wanna see render in the info panel like before - open the info panel, click the node (no change)
DEMO
This is a working demo (Code is local. No PR until I get a level of consensus - wouldn't wanna be accused of breaking any paradigms now would we!)
What this is not
I am not looking to provide a means of generating site documentation built from the nodes or any kind of searchable wiki - it is simply to empower a flow developer/reviewer/editor to quickly see/read/comprehend info notes with minimal context switching.
Both groups and tabs of course do have a place to enter descriptive mark-down, diagrams etc.
What they don't have is the informative icon.
Nick recently said he feels uneasy adding the note icon to tabs.
I don't personally see the problem: tabs happily show the blue dot to show the flow needs a deploy. I suppose the dot is inside the tab boundary versus outside a node boundary.
We really should be able to see the formatted notes with a single click on the icon.
There is Doc-red of course which does all this and more (I've not personally used it). Maybe it should be brought into the core rather than reinventing wheels?
Never used it. If they have something that deserves a place in core, then discussion and pull requests are the normal route forward. That may have already happened but I don't remember seeing anything?
In case it is not clear, proposal 1 and 2 are really just a way of breaking up the post.
Both have been implemented locally (the group node note icon and the quick render popover) to see how they feel/behave.
Doc-red led the way here but that doesn't mean things couldn't be even better.
Certainly groups. Absolutely.
Tabs - also absolutely deserve some love! But prepared to wait to a future iteration if needed. (though just a reminder that doc-red already does this).
The current node doc icon, when clicked, opens the Edit panel at the right tab. Perhaps that could be made double-click. Reserving click to open the popup? Though I'm slightly torn between a hover popup and a click popup. I guess it doesn't matter that much as long as extended text can be scrolled.
And now the thought of having it in Node-RED has been seeded - I want it (To be clear, it is a different feature & out of scope here, but i like it and it is now firmly lodged in my noggin!)
Of course if the first 10-30 lines of the function were actually a comment to describe the function then you wouldn't need the doc page so we could remove that ...
The doc page allows Markdown formatting and even Mermaid diagrams doesn't it. You can't do that in the function code. And, of course, you would still need the doc tab for other nodes.
The issue I see with this, as with other tools that have hover tips - they can get really annoying, especially if there are a lot. So either getting the start delay correct or having them as click-to-show (which I'm leaning towards more as I've thought about it) would be crucial.
Unfortunately click and dblclick on the same button no play nice (I tried)! I could have added some delay to the click and cancelled it if a dblclick landed within xxxms, but it was yuk!
How do you feel about just click - then have a header (same as the info panel) that adds an edit button to the tools div?
that is exactly what I tried. and yes, it works, but you cannot inhibit click occurring when double click is performed so you get momentary popover then the editor
Anyhow, I this is better for touch enabled devices (hover and double click are not great on touch screens) - it is also how GH and many other apps handle this (the popover contains the edit/apply/alter button rather than overloading the trigger button)
Yes that seems sensible to me - and as you point out would work better for tablet/touch screens.
And presumably if the user is a read-only user they don't get the edit button ?
I like that latest proposal. Just popping up on hover might be too distracting when you just move the mouse pointer around.
I also wouldn't mind a simpler change: just open the Info panel on clicking the icon - this already happens, but you don't notice because you get distracted by the markdown description editor showing up .
If you don't open the markdown editor, but maybe just highlight the info Panel, that could be enough. But the popup is more directly visible.
if there are any suggestions to improve that plugin, I am happy to check to implement it.
I also have no problem if some parts of it will be implemented in the core, but the plugin itself will always be useful (for me at least), as it started as a TODO documentation, which propably will never be a core feature.
The first lines of a function node for example is a nice idea, which deserves some thoughts (like if there is no documentation, the code is the documentation...)
