Toggle is a tool used to enable or disable features on software applications, devices and websites. They are often used to implement experimental features and A/B testing.
Technically, a toggle is any kind of switch that changes one of two states or options (on or off). Toggles are commonly found in everyday technology such as smartphones and tablets that enable or disable WiFi or Bluetooth. They are also found in software applications that allow users to toggle between different modes or display settings.
The toggle is a great tool for testing new features in a production environment before rolling them out to all users. It allows you to test and learn what features actually improve your application by tracking how each toggle affects a cohort of users. If a feature is not performing well or causing any issues, the toggle can be easily changed to disable it in production.
Feature toggles are also used to perform multivariate or A/B testing on the product itself. A new feature can be implemented by creating a toggle that buckets each user into one of two groups. When the toggle is turned ON, each user will be sent down a different code path than they would have otherwise been sent, and you can then measure how each pathway performs to determine which is more effective.
You can also use toggles to enable premium features for paid subscribers of an application. This lets your engineering team test out a new feature in the hands of real paying customers without any risk or need to create a separate code branch for their evaluation. Using permission toggles can help you get the most out of your investment in software development and improve the overall customer experience.
Another way to leverage toggles is to transform standard ordered and unordered lists in your article content into interactive collapsible and expandable sections. This saves time on editing and allows you to focus more on creating useful content for your audience. Adding toggles to your articles is easy and does not require any additional markup, so you don’t need to worry about introducing any extra complexity or errors into your code.
It is important to name your toggles appropriately so that everyone on your team can quickly understand their purpose and meaning. This is especially important if you have a large number of toggles, and it helps prevent accidental mistakes. A good practice is to include a piece of metadata or context in the name, such as the name of the person who created the toggle, how long it has been sitting in the codebase and what it does.
Release Toggles should generally not stick around for more than a week or two, although product-centric toggles may need to remain in place for longer periods of time. Toggles in production should be very stable, as they are responsible for a critical portion of your product’s functionality. To avoid any potential bugs, it’s best to deploy a toggle to a small subset of your audience before enabling it in production, and then gradually ramp up the number of people using the toggle.
