A toggle (pronounced tog-lee) is a switch that has two positions, on and off. Toggles are found in many everyday technology devices and software applications and can be used to enable or disable features, switch between different modes, or to change settings. They are also frequently utilized for aesthetic purposes, such as changing the theme of an application or website.
A common use case for toggles is to allow users to switch between light and dark themes. This can help users to improve their reading experience and make the app more visually appealing depending on their personal preferences. In these cases, toggles are often designed to utilize the same colors for both the on and off states so that the user can identify the current state by color alone. This design decision can be problematic for users with color vision deficiency. It is important to ensure that toggles are properly configured to avoid confusion for these users. To help mitigate this issue, designers should consider using high contrast colors for on/off states and clearly label the toggle’s state with a clear description of what it does when pressed.
Toggles can also be useful for providing an easy way for users to make certain areas of an article private or public at a moment’s notice without editing the article itself. This feature is commonly seen in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter where a user can toggle the visibility of their posts. Toggle buttons are usually located on the top of an article and can be accessed by clicking the double gear icon or by mousing over the [container]…[/container] tags in an article.
There are a number of ways to implement toggles in code, with some approaches being more dynamic than others. The most basic approach is to hardcode the toggle configuration in a static file. This method is relatively simple but comes with the drawback that it is difficult to change quickly as your project grows in size. In order to avoid this limitation, many organizations move their toggle configuration into some type of centralized store. This may be an existing application DB, an Elasticsearch instance, or some other type of data store.
Another advantage to moving your toggles into a centralized store is that there is less need to verify how the toggle will perform with every release. This can be a good trade-off for sacrificing some degree of dynamic flexibility. The downside of this approach is that it can be difficult to keep track of your toggles over time and can lead to accidental regressions if not managed carefully. As a result, this method is generally reserved for more stable releases.
