Site Editor: preserve selection in drill down tabs when switching between

[annezazu]

What problem does this address?

This came up as part of the nineteenth call for testing for the FSE Outreach Program:

When navigating between the “Block” and “Template” tabs in the right-hand sidebar, the active list-view/styles/settings sub-tab was not preserved (e.g. Click the settings cog; click “Template” at the top; click “Block” at the top and I’m back on list-view.)

If you drill down in one section, move away, and switch back your place is lost. This happens with Styles and with block settings. This could potentially be increasingly annoying, especially with the split settings in place for blocks now as the video below shows:

preserve.mov

What is your proposed solution?

If possible, we should preserve where folks left off when switching between. There could be big drawbacks though that I'm not thinking of but, especially when it comes to things like being able to push local styles to global #44361, it seems like we should be able to switch between.

cc @WordPress/gutenberg-design @aaronrobertshaw for the split settings piece/for your awareness.

[jameskoster]

Styles will likely move to the dark navigation area as a part of #36667, so it might be best to focus on the Appearance / Settings tabs in the block inspector here?

I don't personally have strong feelings about whether the active tab should be 'remembered'. At a push I'd probably lean towards the current behaviour whereby the first tab (considered the most likely destination) is the one that is active on selection.

[apeatling]

This seems like one that needs more usage and time to see if it becomes more of an issue, before making any state preservation changes.

There are some other state persistence changes in #41544 that were decided not to be pursued, although for more complex reasons.

[aaronrobertshaw]

Thanks for the ping 👍

This seems like one that needs more usage and time to see if it becomes more of an issue, before making any state preservation changes.

+1

One of the catches here is that the block inspector sidebar tabs are a Gutenberg experiment currently and preserving selections would likely require introducing experimental actions and selectors to our data stores. Similar updates received well-deserved pushback during recent explorations into managing default tabs or switching to a specific tab on a specific event.

[annezazu]

Thank you all for chiming in. I'll keep this open for now, unless anyone objects, to see if others run into similar pain points over time.

[jasmussen]

I would echo Jay and note that with the move to the dark context, this is likely going to solve itself.