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Node Editors and Work Windows as Panels

Goal: Open a node's editor, or any window you work in, beside the canvas, and put it where you want it.

A node's editor, and every window you work in, is a panel, like the Inspector or the Live Stream. It does not cover the canvas: it opens floating over the workspace, and you can dock it anywhere, beside the node you are editing, along an edge or as a tab with another panel. Nothing assumes a main area.

Opening a node's editor

Select a node on the canvas, then press its editor button in the Inspector:

NodeInspector buttonThe panel's title
Warm QueryManage QueryQuery: and the node's name
Database, on any canvasManage containersDatabase: and the node's name

An Interface node's page editor, where your workspace offers Interfaces, works the same way: its Manage Interface button opens a panel titled Interface: and the node's name.

Each node has one editor panel. Pressing the button again while that panel is open shows the open panel (bringing its tab forward if it shares a place) and never opens a second one. Two Warm Query nodes give two panels, one each, so you can read one query while you write the other.

The editor has no chat of its own: Thinky, in its own panel, can see the editors you have open.

Where it opens

  • The first time, the editor opens floating at the right of the workspace. Drag its title bar to dock it, or choose a place from Move to in its menu. See Docking.
  • After you close it, it opens again where you last had it: as a tab in the place it shared with other panels, beside the panel it sat next to, or floating where it floated. If that place is gone (the panels it sat with are closed too), it opens floating. The workspace remembers the place while the page is open.
  • Moving it loses nothing. Floating, docking and moving a panel keep what it shows: where you had scrolled to, a form half filled in and a query half typed.

It stays on its node

An editor belongs to the node it was opened from, not to whatever is selected. Click another node and the Inspector follows your click, but every open editor keeps showing its own node, so nothing you were writing is replaced.

  • Its title names its node, and pointing at its tab shows the node's full place: the surface's name, then the node's.
  • Show on canvas, in the panel's menu (the three dots on its title bar), finds its node: it opens the canvas the node sits on, a surface's included, and centres the node there.
  • Deleting the node closes its editor. Its last place is forgotten with it.

Run, results and set-up windows

Every other window you work in is a panel too, a work window:

  • Deploy, from the top bar. A deploy that is running keeps drawing its progress where it started when you dock or move the panel. See Deploy.
  • Validation Errors, which lists what a save or a deploy found, each with its node.
  • API Manager, whose tabs work the same docked or floating. See API Manager.
  • Proposals, which is always a panel. See Proposals.
  • Every set-up window in the Environment, Workspace and Billing menus, and Manage Profile: Cloud Connections, Private CALZ, Data Stores, Data & IoT Fabric, Provenance, App Identity, Workspace Settings, Team Members and the rest. See Environment.

A work window opens floating at the right of the workspace, and you dock it the way you dock any panel. A set-up window that walks you through steps, such as Cloud Connections or Private CALZ, keeps your place in those steps when you dock or move it mid-way. Its close button, at the right of its title bar, closes the window.

What stays a pop-up

A few windows still open over the workspace and block it until you answer, because each asks one question that has to be settled before anything else happens:

  • A confirmation: archiving a workspace, removing or deleting something, clearing a Thinky conversation, and the like.
  • Sign Out.
  • Create New Workspace, opened from Manage Workspaces (which is itself a panel).
  • Rotate, on a connected app.
  • Session expired, which stays until you sign in again.

In a pop-up, Tab stays inside it and Escape closes it, except Session expired, which Escape does not close.

Escape never closes a panel

Losing a panel you arranged to one key press is never right, so Escape never closes a panel. In a panel, Escape:

  • cancels a drag that is under way, and the panel goes back where it was;
  • puts every panel back when one is maximised;
  • otherwise takes you back to the canvas, so your next keys act on your nodes.

Escape keeps its own meaning wherever it has one: it closes an open menu or list, and in a box you are typing in it does what that box does. To close a panel, use its close button or Close in its menu. See Keyboard shortcuts.

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