Header and body seperately renderable

[christian-konrad]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Developers are building extensions for the properties panel that are disparate from the regular properties panel feature set. One and probably the best example is at Camunda, we are integrating the comments panel in the Web Modeler next to the properties panel. As there is no way to embed it into the properties panel itself, users are switching between the properties and comments with tabs outside of the properties panel, in a way that does not look and feel great. It violates some UX hierarchy principles. Additionally, the panel header is kind-of repeated, because the context of the selected flow node is also relevant for the comments tab (and all other tabs/panels people are building).

Describe the solution you'd like

A way to mount both the header and body of the panel separately (optionally), so consumers can build their own navigation patterns around or in between it.

Example illustration to demonstrate it:

Describe alternatives you've considered

• A way to hide the panel header completely, but then it must be reimplemented by the surrounding/embedding tool (i.e. the Web Modeler)
• Deferred idea: Introduce tabs into the properties panel (again), but only as an extension point, so I as a developer can mount my extensions into the panel by providing the extension and a tab title. If I do not provide this, no tabs will appear at all (it then stays the same as before).

Additional context

[pinussilvestrus]

We removed tabs via the new properties panel architecture. The goal now should be that we bring them back?

Context: Blog post (Section "The new properties panel")

Would it be an option to have the comments as a separate group?

[nikku]

👍 on @pinussilvestrus comment.

One thing I could imagine is to be able to consume header and properties panel body as separate components; this way users, i.e. Web Modeler can implement arbitrary tabbing (I do understand the need to have the header on top of everything else).

[christian-konrad]

@nikku I can also imagine this. I add your thought to the alternatives section (even if I would say, I would prefer your alternative for now). If it solves the problem for the Web Modeler, totally fine. How could it look like for our panel consumers to mount both parts individually from an API point of view?
Is it a concern of performance/syncing both header and content?
I think it also works for others adding their own disparate stuff to the right section of the screen and allowing them to build their own experience around switching the views (I've seen a lot of different solutions where this happened and it just looked "off" due to double header or missing header).

[nikku]

How could it look like for our panel consumers to mount both parts individually from an API point of view?

Would need to look into it and so could anyone else on the team. Moving to ready.

[MaxTru]

No capacity in this iteration. Moving to backlog for now.