Deprecate sheets

[Tim Peeters]

Mark all sheet components as deprecated and remove them in future.

[Michael Spencer (ibelieve)]

So what's going to replace the Sheet component? I can see many use cases for sheets, especially on the desktop where a full-size, app page is not the best option.

[Benjamin Keyser (bjkeyser)]

There is no direct replacement... the controls and views are distributed differently than that throughout the interfaces. It won't be a 1:1 swap with anything.

[Tim Peeters (tpeeters)]

I had a chat with John and it might be that contentHub uses sheets at the moment. If that is not the case we can deprecate the sheets.

[Tim Peeters (tpeeters)]

Note that if contentHub (or other apps) use sheets now, then the deprecation will only be delayed until we have resources to update the designs (+code) for those apps not to use sheets any more.

[Tim Peeters (tpeeters)]

we are deprecating the sheets.

It will not break apps that use them, but it prints a warning message on console if they are being used, and Sheets will be removed from the API docs.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

The System Settings designs use sheets in these places:
* Background: "Preview" and "Choose area" (because otherwise, noticing and then undoing a poor choice would be tedious)
* Language & Text: "Display language" (because otherwise, undoing a mistaken choice would require navigating a UI written in a language that you probably can't even read)
* Network, "Custom Internet APN" and "Custom MMS APN" (because instant-apply could have weird effects)
* Network, "Connect to Other Network" (because it necessarily contains too much stuff to fit in a partial-screen dialog)
* Security & Privacy, "Switch to Passphrase" from passcode and vice versa (ditto)
* Security & Privacy, "Change SIM PIN" (ditto)
* Updates, "Get On Wi-Fi" (so that you are guaranteed to return to the error screen after connecting)
* Updates, "Installing update" for a system update (though this might be a one-off screen).

The Online Accounts design also uses a sheet with a "Cancel" button for embedding the authorization Web page. And once the phone allows connecting to Wi-Fi captive portals, the login page, too, will likely be embedded in a sheet.

As far as I know, the toolkit contains no suitable replacement for any of these. Some of them occur within page stacks, but using a page for those particular things would be misleading, because it would suggest that they are instant-apply like the rest of the stack when they can't be.

I am not pining for this particular API. That snap decisions, dialogs, and sheets are three different APIs is a profound problem. (Most obviously, something that is a full-screen sheet on a phone should often be a partial-screen dialog on a tablet, and even if it is a sheet on a tablet it should almost always be a dialog on a PC.) But dropping its API documentation, without documenting a suitable replacement, is not helpful to those implementing System Settings, networking, or Online Accounts.

[PS Jenkins bot (ps-jenkins)]

Fix committed into lp:~ubuntu-sdk-team/ubuntu-ui-toolkit/staging at revision None, scheduled for release in ubuntu-ui-toolkit, milestone Unknown

[Tim Peeters (tpeeters)]

technically, the use cases that you mention could use a Page on the PageStack. The Page can then have cancel and confirm buttons, and no changes are applied until Confirm is clicked. Whether this is a good idea from a design point-of-view (the Page will be full-window on a desktop), I leave to you guys.

I added this bug to ubuntu-ux.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I addressed that possibility: "Some of them occur within page stacks, but using a page for those particular things would be misleading, because it would suggest that they are instant-apply like the rest of the stack when they can't be." For brevity I omitted that others are not in page stacks at all: "Connect to Other Network" when it is accessed from the indicator, and the probable solution for reauthorizing to an Online Account (bug 1262876).