What problem are you trying to solve?
Open Knowledge's app shell assumes a desktop split-pane layout. Panels (Files, properties, agent chat) take a fixed width and compress the document into whatever space is left, rather than yielding or overlaying. Below roughly tablet width this stops working.
Reported concretely in #1541: at a 430 x 932 viewport, opening Files leaves the document about 134px wide, which clips content, properties, and toolbar controls. The specific toolbar overlap in that report is fixed. The layout behavior that caused it is not.
Two things make this broader than the original report:
- It is not only the Files sidebar. Every panel that can open alongside the document has the same fixed-width, space-taking behavior.
- It is not only phones. Any narrow browser window on desktop hits the same wall, including a half-screen split on a laptop.
Proposed solution
Not settled yet. The direction we are looking at:
- Below a breakpoint, panels overlay the document instead of splitting it.
- Panels rank by scope so the least contextual one yields first when space runs out.
- A dismiss control that is reliably reachable and does not collide with the toolbar underneath.
- After acting in a panel (selecting a file, for example), focus and view return to the document.
Open questions we have not answered: where the breakpoints sit, whether panels auto-collapse or require an explicit toggle, and how that interacts with panel state a user has set deliberately. Prior art here is thin. Most desktop editors either do not handle narrow widths at all or collapse everything at once, so this is likely to be a derived design rather than a borrowed one.
Area
Editor
Alternatives considered
- Per-panel minimum widths only. Rejected as a fix on its own. It stops the document being crushed to 134px but keeps the underlying assumption that panels and document must share one row.
- Overflow menus for panel controls at narrow widths, as Figma does. Useful for controls inside a panel, does not address the document being squeezed.
Scope and status
Accepted as a real gap. This is a layout rework rather than a patch, and it is not currently scheduled, so there is no timeline on it. Labeled backlog to reflect that.
Follow-on from #1541. Thanks to @leoperkins for the original report and the measurements.
What problem are you trying to solve?
Open Knowledge's app shell assumes a desktop split-pane layout. Panels (Files, properties, agent chat) take a fixed width and compress the document into whatever space is left, rather than yielding or overlaying. Below roughly tablet width this stops working.
Reported concretely in #1541: at a 430 x 932 viewport, opening Files leaves the document about 134px wide, which clips content, properties, and toolbar controls. The specific toolbar overlap in that report is fixed. The layout behavior that caused it is not.
Two things make this broader than the original report:
Proposed solution
Not settled yet. The direction we are looking at:
Open questions we have not answered: where the breakpoints sit, whether panels auto-collapse or require an explicit toggle, and how that interacts with panel state a user has set deliberately. Prior art here is thin. Most desktop editors either do not handle narrow widths at all or collapse everything at once, so this is likely to be a derived design rather than a borrowed one.
Area
Editor
Alternatives considered
Scope and status
Accepted as a real gap. This is a layout rework rather than a patch, and it is not currently scheduled, so there is no timeline on it. Labeled
backlogto reflect that.Follow-on from #1541. Thanks to @leoperkins for the original report and the measurements.