Flyout: Active Files

This is a quick rundown of our newest addition to the flyout tabs. The Active panel aims to enhance and streamline how you work with multiple open files. Instead of scanning through the names of tabs, which might even be hidden, you see a vertical list of file names. This is easier to read and there are also three modes how the tabs are organized.

Tabs View

The first layout mode is called "Tabs" and shows the open files in the same order as the tabs across the top. You can use drag and drop to re-order them, use the arrow buttons to change the ordering, or even use the filter box to help you find a tab more quickly.

Starring files

Starred files, indicated by the filled star icon, are kept in the list even when the file is closed – this resembles how bookmarks work. Toggle the "Starred" button at the top left to show or hide closed bookmarked files. To star a file, just click on the empty star on the left of the file name. To unstar it, click the filled star of an opened file. Note: unstarring closed files is not possible, because this leads to accidental unstarring.

The main use case is to mark often used files to get back to them later. They can serve as a static anchor point in a larger project with many files!

Folder View

The second layout is Folder. Instead of showing all tabs in the "natural" ordering, this view groups them by directory and sorts the files by name. This gives the files a consistent place.

Since directories are logical groupings of files, this view naturally inherits these groups from the folder layout.

The "Home" directory has a special place at the top. Clicking on the "(X)" close button of a directory means that all opened files in that folder are closed.

By starring a directory, it is kept in the list of tabs at all times. This is helpful to quickly open that directory in the full page file explorer: just click on the folder and you jump there immediately.

Typed View

Finally, these opened and starred files can also be grouped by their type. So, imagine you work with a couple of Jupyter Notebooks, they will be in that view at the top at all time.

Here are two screenshots, showing all starred files vs. only grouping the opened ones:

showing starred files:

no starring:

Finally: remember any time you open a file, the "current directory" in your project changes as well. This means you can get to see all files in that current directory, when you click on the "Explorer" or you can add files in the current directory in "New".