Toggle is a term used to describe a switch that can be set to either on or off. The word can be applied to both hardware and software — think of the caps lock and num lock keys on your keyboard or the toggle in your video chat settings that allows you to switch between two screens at once. It also can be used to refer to the ability to make changes in a system quickly and without impacting other users (or possibly even other builds of your product).
Toggles are a useful tool for teams that need to enable or disable features for large numbers of users. In many cases, they are preferable to other types of controls, such as radio buttons or checkboxes, because they can be enabled or disabled with a single click rather than multiple clicks. They are not perfect however and there can be some challenges that come along with using them, which is why it’s important for teams to understand the pros and cons of this type of control.
Aside from providing a nice graphical cue, Toggles can help reduce the amount of code needed to implement a specific feature, and they can be more easily tested than other types of controls. However, as is often the case, there are a lot of hidden details that can make it tricky to use Toggles effectively.
The Toggle advanced options are a great place to start when working with this control. They allow you to adjust a number of different settings, such as positioning, Responsive, Animation & Delay. The advanced options for this control are very similar to those of the overall element advanced options.
One of the challenges that comes with Toggles is managing their configuration in a way that ensures that all tests are exercised correctly. This can be a challenge at scale, particularly when we’re talking about things like Ops Toggles which are generally very long-lived and semi-permanent in nature or Experiment Toggles which are usually short-lived but highly iterative in their approach.
Savvy teams try to be proactive about this issue and to limit the number of Toggles in their codebase as much as possible. They do this by regularly adding tasks to the backlog to remove toggles that have been in production for a while. Some teams go as far as putting “expiration dates” on their toggles so that tests fail automatically when the toggles reach an age where they are no longer needed.
