Miguel Palhas
cd37ac5d6d
The previewed row and the keyboard cursor both drew a 2px inset ring, which read as a border on hover rather than as a colour. Rows now carry the preview hue as a fill: a light wash under the pointer or the cursor, deepening to an opaque `--preview-tint` once the preview lands. That leaves `.is-active`'s ring as the only one in the session list, where it now means exactly one thing — open in a pane. The pane's titlebar drops its hairline for the same reason; the dashed edges that remain belong to the canvas and the throwaway tab.
4.6 KiB
PREVIEW.md — the sidebar preview contract
One rule for what the content pane shows while the operator is only moving around the sidebar, so the web client and the TUI behave the same. Read this before changing either. If the behaviour needs to change, change it here first.
The rule
Highlighting a session in the sidebar shows that session in the content pane, as if it were focused, without focusing it and without changing the layout. Moving the highlight elsewhere puts back exactly what was on screen before.
A preview is a view, not a state. Nothing about it is durable:
- The layout is byte-for-byte identical before the preview and after it ends.
- Nothing is persisted while a preview is up (the web client's layout is saved
to
localStorage; a preview never reaches it). - The daemon is never told the previewed pane is focused, so a preview never
clears a session's
AwaitingInputglow (docs/SIDEBAR.md). - The keyboard stays in the sidebar: the previewed terminal is on screen but
does not take focus, so the next
j/kstill walks the list.
Where the preview is shown
| The previewed session is… | What happens |
|---|---|
| Already in a pane, in the active tab | That pane comes forward (its tab's focus moves to it). |
| Already in a pane, in another tab | That tab is brought forward. The active tab is restored when the preview ends. |
| Not in any pane | A throwaway tab carries it. It is removed when the preview ends. |
The throwaway tab never counts as an open session: the tab bar does not appear because of it, the mobile shell does not switch away from the session list for it, and the sidebar does not mark the session as open.
How a preview reads
A preview is provisional, so it never wears the accent — the accent is what says "this is the one you picked". It has a hue of its own, and every surface involved in the preview carries that same hue, so the pane and the row it came from read as one thing rather than two unrelated highlights.
Web client (--preview and friends in web/src/styles.css):
| Surface | While previewing |
|---|---|
| The previewed pane's titlebar | Tinted in the preview hue, at full strength, in place of the focused pane's accent tint. |
| The canvas | A preview chip, top right, and a dashed inset ring. |
| A throwaway tab | Dashed border, italic label. |
| The sidebar row being previewed | Filled with the preview hue, over whatever open/focused state the row already had. |
| A hovered sidebar row, and the keyboard cursor on a session | A lighter wash of the same hue, because both are what previews a row. |
Rows say it with fill, not with an edge: the only ring left in the session list
is .is-active's, which means "open in a pane". The dashed edges belong to the
pane — the canvas ring and the throwaway tab.
The hue is a palette token, not a fixed colour: a palette whose accent already
sits on it moves it (--preview-h), so "previewing" and "picked" never collide.
The TUI marks a preview in text only — the title bar reads <name> · preview
— and has no preview colour role yet.
What ends a preview
- The highlight moves to another session — that session is previewed instead.
- The highlight leaves every session (a folder row, or the list losing the keyboard, or the pointer leaving the list): the previous view comes back.
- Any real layout change (split, close, new tab, tab switch, drag): the preview is discarded first, so a throwaway tab is never baked into the arrangement.
What commits a preview
Choosing the previewed session — clicking or pressing Enter on its row,
clicking into its pane, or handing the keyboard to the pane (web: Tab from
the list; TUI: the attach binding) — keeps exactly what is on screen. A
throwaway tab becomes a real one; a focus move inside an existing tab stands.
Nothing moves a second time on commit.
Timing
A preview follows the highlight closely enough to be usable as a way to look around, and lags a pointer enough not to flash rows crossed on the way somewhere else.
| Trigger | Delay |
|---|---|
Keyboard step (j/k, arrows) |
60 ms |
| Pointer hover (web, mouse only — never touch) | 150 ms |
| Clearing (highlight left every session) | same delay as the trigger that set it |
Touch has no hover, and a tap already opens a session, so touch never previews.
Cost
A previewed session that no pane holds needs a live attach. Both clients keep it connected after the preview ends — the web client parks it in the connection pool's LRU, the TUI keeps its emulator until it falls out of the preview budget — so stepping back onto a row is instant rather than re-fetching scrollback.