Toggle is a software development tool that allows developers to hide and show content to users in a way that minimizes scrolling, improves navigation, and provides a more accessible experience. When used properly, toggles are an effective way to organize article content so that visitors can find what they need and reduce overall reader fatigue. However, using toggles requires careful planning to ensure that hidden content doesn’t become inaccessible to visitors and that articles aren’t hampered by unexpected visual effects.
Ideally, every toggle should have an associated label that clearly describes what it does. Having a clear description in proximity to the control is a simple but effective design convention that can be applied across a variety of interfaces. Additionally, toggles should have a consistent style that signals its state change. This can be achieved by using visual cues like color changes or animations, or through the use of a specific icon to represent an active or passive toggle. Finally, it’s important to consider the underlying usability principles when designing toggles, particularly their position within the UI and whether or not they are shaped to look like sliders.
In order to prevent confusion, designers should keep the number of toggles on any given page to a minimum. Toggles that are nested together can lead to cognitive overload, and the additional effort required to move between toggles can increase user frustration. Toggles should also be positioned so that they can be activated with a single click, to make them more convenient for users.
When incorporating feature toggling into a development process, it’s crucial that teams plan for long-term maintenance. Without proper oversight, toggles can accumulate and create what’s known as “toggle debt” that bloats the codebase and hinders future development efforts. To avoid this, it’s best to have a defined process for reviewing and pruning old toggles. This can be as simple as adding toggle cleanup tasks to a team’s backlog or as complex as integrating the process into a feature management system.
It’s also important to test all toggle configurations, both those that are currently live in production and those that will be released in a future release. This will help avoid any surprise regressions caused by long-lived toggles that aren’t properly managed. Many teams even test with all toggles flipped on, so they have an accurate picture of how the final product will function before it is released. This will require more frequent tests, but it’s worth it to avoid the frustration of discovering a hidden regression months after releasing a new version of an application. Fortunately, since feature toggles rarely impact each other directly, these types of regression tests are relatively straightforward. This helps to streamline the testing process and improve developer productivity.
