A toggle switch is a device that allows you to easily turn things on and off. For example, a toggle can be used to switch between different camera angles in a photo or to hide sent messages on a chat app. Toggles can also be used in computer software to enable or disable features based on user preferences or device capabilities. In this article we’ll discuss how to use toggles in web design and development and explore some of the more advanced features they can offer.
The word toggle comes from the 18th century and originally meant a pin passed transversely through an eye or loop in a chain, rope, etc., so as to bind it temporarily. This type of fastener is still sometimes referred to as a toggle joint, and it’s the kind that can be used to enable or disable Caps Lock (or toggle caps lock on and off).
In web design, toggles are often used as part of responsive designs. They’re especially useful for enabling or disabling components of the interface based on screen size and other parameters.
Toggle switches have a very distinct visual appearance and are often designed to be easy to understand. They’re usually circular or rectangular and contain only two states (on or off). They also typically don’t display any text so the state has to be conveyed through other means such as color or other context-dependent signifiers.
While the concept of Toggle is relatively simple there are a number of challenges in designing and implementing effective toggles. The first challenge is choosing the right visual cues. It’s important to consider contrast, cultural relevance, and other factors when determining what colors to use for the on/off states.
Another challenge is keeping the number of toggles under control. Savvy teams view toggles as inventory that comes with a carrying cost, and they work to minimize the number of toggles in production. Some teams have policies in place to add a task to remove a Release Toggle to the backlog whenever it is introduced, while others put “expiration dates” on their toggles so that they’re automatically removed from production after a certain amount of time has passed.
Many teams leverage Experiment Toggles as a way to perform A/B or multivariate testing with a live user base. This can be done by assigning users to one of several cohorts at runtime and sending them down different code paths depending on their cohort. By tracking the aggregate behavior of each cohort we can make data-driven optimizations such as changing the wording on a Call To Action button or the purchase flow of an ecommerce system.
In some cases, developers will hardcode the configuration of a Toggle via a comment in the code or using a preprocessor’s #ifdef feature. This approach can be cumbersome at scale and is only suitable for short-lived toggles. Increasingly, however, teams are opting to move Toggle configuration into some type of centralized store, such as an existing application DB or a specialized feature flag management tool.
