Opening and closing UXP panels on demand? Closed by default?

[gregbenz]

For plugins with multiple panels, it would be helpful to hide some panels by default (ie not show when first installing) and to be able to show or hide such a panel via BatchPlay.

• Is there a way in the manifest.json to request that a given panel is not visible in the workspace by default when first installed?
• Is there a way to open and close a specific UXP panel via BatchPlay?

This would help simplify the user experience for complex panels where some features are not likely to apply to many users.

[Karmalakas]

I see there was no reply to your or Jardas posts and I’m pretty sure nothing changed since:

@Sujai

there is no field in the manifest to say which is the default panel to load on launch of the Plugin. We are recommending Applications to go with just loading the first panel from the manifest. Will update once applications implements this recommendation, however until then you will see this behaviour and there would be no way to supress this.

[gregbenz]

@pkrishna @Sujai Could you chime in? Is there a way to show / hide a specific panel in a plugin (referencing its id under manifest entrypoints)? That would be very useful to simplify some complex plugins for the user.

And is there a way to set a default in the manifest? That would avoid the need for extra logic (tracking 1st use, etc) and prevent something from showing on screen and then hiding.

@Jarda Did you ever find a solution? I suppose someone could trigger PS menu items, would have to test to find the dynamically ID. Not ideal.

[JasonM]

@gregbenz

Did you ever find a solution? I suppose someone could trigger PS menu items, would have to test to find the dynamically ID. Not ideal.

I have done that method to force re-showing a plugin. It is a bit hacky but worked.

[samgannaway]

We are going to look at one item for plugins with multiple panels: allowing the panels to be “grouped” at load instead of all in separate panel windows. We’ll note the proposed “don’t show” option for consideration.

Hmm, I think the menu item command is the only way to (kind of) control a 3p panel right now. I wonder though since those are dynamic for the Plugins menu.

[gregbenz]

@samgannaway Both grouping and “don’t show” sound great. If there can be a way to explicitly show/hide a panel from a plugin via BatchPlay, that would be ideal to manage dynamic uses (such as showing the panel when it becomes relevant).

[tomzag]

I agree. It would be very helpful if we could choose which panel is displayed at load time!

[Jarda]

There is OWL action descriptor to open/close any panel in CEP and JSX, and some of you at Adobe explicitly banned that in UXP for 3rd party plugins …along with other usefull commands like toggle panels, quit photoshop etc.

[photonic]

Don’t forget the panel resize function which was useful af !!

[gregbenz]

Agreed, the old CEP panel resizing function was very helpful! Can clean up interfaces that change, and it avoids user confusion if some of the UI flows beyond the boundaries of the panel (especially in a situation where raising the minimum size would not be valid for all scenarios - some panels need to the flexibility).

[photonic]

Totally! , I used to have a “compact mode” for my plugins so users with smaller monitors can work with a compacted UI or to have less features showed, it was such an incredible UX for me as dev and for my community, they really miss that. I had to make some tricks to make it work in UXP and change the UX a little bit.