A toggle is a small piece of wood or plastic that is sewn into something, like a coat or bag. It is then pushed through a loop or hole to fasten it. On computers and some other machines, toggles are used to switch between two functions. For example, if you want to use the microphone and webcam at the same time on Skype, you must toggle between them using the screen options menu. The word toggle can also be used as a verb, meaning to switch or alternate between two things. For instance, if you are working with two colleagues on a project and need to swap back and forth between screens, you would toggle between their respective screens.
In the world of note-taking, toggle notes are an effective way to organize and prioritize tasks and ideas. They save time, increase retention, and encourage collaboration. In addition, they are highly customizable and can be tailored to suit each user’s needs. Toggle notes can be easily organized into different categories and subcategories, making them easier to find and navigate.
The Toggle control can be found in the UI library’s Default controls group and supports several properties that you can use to customize its behavior. For example, you can specify the text that is displayed for the toggle’s On and Off states as well as the location where these labels appear relative to the toggle. You can also change the icon used for the toggle and set its mode. Toggle mode determines how the control behaves and how it is styled.
There are several methods for managing the configuration of toggles, ranging from simple but less dynamic (such as commenting) to more sophisticated but more complex approaches such as the use of preprocessor features like #ifdef. The advantage of the latter is that it allows you to make changes to toggles without having to deploy a new release. However, this method is only suitable for feature toggles where you are willing to follow a pattern of deploying releases with and without toggle configuration changes.
Toggle switches must be clearly marked so that users can understand the state of the switch. This means that the toggle’s color should communicate the change in its state, and it is recommended that you use high-contrast colors to signal a state change. Additionally, you should consider societal and cultural differences when choosing colors for toggles to ensure that they are meaningful to your audience.
Another common use of toggles is for experimentation and A/B testing. For example, an e-commerce company may create two versions of their configurator with two different suggestion algorithms and then test which one performs better with customers. They would add an experiment toggle to the configurator and then use the Toggle Router to consistently send the same user down one of the two codepaths based on their toggle state. Once they have conclusive data that shows which algorithm performs better, they can remove the experiment toggle and deploy the winning algorithm for all users.