houseplan-card/docs/UX-MODES.md

UX redesign: three modes (approved 2026-07-21)

Approved design for reorganizing all card interactions into three tab-like modes. Driven by the owner's mandate and confirmed by real user feedback (issue #3: "When moving the map around, I sometimes move the doors/sensors around"). This document is the source of truth for the implementation iterations below. No code has been changed yet.

Principle

A segmented control in the card header with three tabs; the active one is visually highlighted, and edit modes add a colored frame around the stage so the mode is obvious at a glance:

[ 📐 Plan editor ] [ 🔧 Device editor ] [ ✏️ Background editor ] — View has NO tab (since v1.30.2). The Background editor (v1.33.0) manages a purely visual decor layer (lines/rects/ovals/text in space.decor, drawn under the rooms, inert everywhere outside its editor).

• View is the implicit default state: no editor tab is active. Since v1.38.2 the last space AND editor mode are restored across reloads (localStorage, admins only for edit modes) — closing and reopening the tab lands you where you were (owner's decision, reversing the earlier "never restore" rule).
• Activating an editor tab highlights it and opens that editor's bottom toolbar (both editors have one since v1.30.2). The toolbar and the active tab each carry an X that closes the editor back to View; re-clicking the active tab does nothing; Plan↔Devices switches directly.
• Plan editor and Device editor are shown only to admins when admin_only is on.

View — display and device interaction only

Allowed: pan/zoom (wheel, pinch, buttons), switching spaces, device tap (info / more-info / toggle per settings), long-press → info card, opening tap → door/lock info card (with an explicit Unlock/Lock button when a lock is bound — the only way to operate a lock from the card; plan-icon taps never toggle locks), room-card link icon → HA area (room taps do nothing since v1.40.1), hover tooltips (name, temperature, signal).

Removed from this mode (they move, not die):

• icon dragging ("drag anywhere", v1.9 — consciously reversed),
• room-label dragging,
• opening dragging along walls and double-click properties (v1.23.1),
• every edit button in the header (+device, 👁 show-all, ↺ reset, ⬡ rules, ⚙ general, per-space gear, markup toggle).

Header in View: space tabs, device count, zoom cluster. Nothing else.

Plan — geometry and appearance of the space

• Toolbar tools: Outline room, Delete room, Merge, Split, Resize, Opening (place / drag along walls / properties), Open boundary, Wall thickness (docs/WALL-THICKNESS.md — click a wall, set cm/inches from HA's unit system; empty/0 clears), Room labels (drag positions — labels are part of the plan).
• Space gear dialog (title, plan image / hand-drawn, scale, Display section, show_lqi), add space, floors import, delete space.
• ⚙ General settings (fill palette) lives here — it is about the plan's appearance.

What a space may choose not to draw (2026-08-05)

Three switches in the space's Display section decide how much of the plan is inked. All of them are display only — nothing is deleted, nothing changes meaning, and each layer stays visible in the editor that owns it, because a layer you cannot see is a layer you cannot edit.

Setting	Off (default)	On	Always drawn in
show_borders — «Всегда отображать границы комнат»	borders (and the dashed virtual walls) are hidden	both are drawn	the Plan editor
hide_decor — «Скрыть декоративный слой»	decor is drawn	lines, shapes, labels and furniture are hidden	the Background editor
hide_openings — «Скрыть проёмы»	doors and windows are drawn	their symbols are hidden	the Plan editor

• Virtual walls follow show_borders (owner, 2026-08-05). They are walls — dashed ones. Drawing them on a space with no borders left a plan whose only walls were a few floating dashed stretches.
• hide_openings hides the symbol, not the opening. Light still spills through it, the sun still enters at a window, a contact sensor still opens it, and the resize tool still anchors to it. Anything else would be a second meaning for one setting.
• Both new switches store nothing when off (the key is omitted, as bg_color is), so a plan written before this reads back byte-for-byte. Backend: hide_decor / hide_openings, strictly bool, both optional.

Devices — placement and marker configuration

• Icon dragging (ONLY here). Click on a device opens the edit dialog directly (binding, name, icon, size/angle, display badge/ripple + colors, tap override, model/link/description/PDFs, room).
• • add device/entity/virtual, the "Hide device from plan" checkbox (since v1.51.0 the one hiding mechanism, docs/FILTERING.md), ↺ reset layout, 👁 "Show hidden" (local editor tool; replaced the shared show-all toggle), ⬡ icon rules.

Background — the decor underlay

• Toolbar tools: select / line / rect / oval / text / erase, plus colour, width and fill. Shapes are drag-drawn with grid snap and a live preview.
• Live size badge (owner 2026-08-04): while a LINE is being dragged out, the same .measurelabel the Plan editor puts on a wall shows «length · angle» — segmentCm over the space's cell_cm, metres or feet per the HA unit system, green on a 45° multiple. It rides the MIDDLE of the segment (a wall badge follows the cursor because the cursor is the wall's free end; a decor line is pulled out by both ends at once), updates on every move and disappears the moment the shape is committed. Rectangles and ovals have no length, so they show their bounding box «W × H» instead; a draft with no size shows nothing.

Deprecations decided

1. "Drag anywhere" (v1.9) — reversed by this design.
2. Opening drag / dbl-click properties in view (v1.23.1) — moved into Plan.
3. The markup toggle button — replaced by the Plan tab.
4. Legacy localStorage mode (card without the integration) — candidate for removal in the next major; adds branching for a half-working scenario.

Approved follow-up features (from issue #3, by priority)

1. State-reflecting icons (open/closed door variants etc., like core HA).
2. display: value — show the measurement instead of an icon.
3. Light color in the icon/ripple (RGB lights). (Shipped in v1.27.0; superseded in v1.52.0: the colour lives in the glow spot and the ripple fallback only, the icon tint was removed by the owner's rule.)
4. Alarm visual (leak/smoke/doorbell): red pulse overlay.
5. Rooms as sub-areas without an HA area + manual device placement by room id.
6. Backlog (not planned): music notes for players, directional TV ripples.

Implementation iterations

• It.1 — mode shell: the segmented control, mode state, View-mode gating of all edit interactions/buttons (biggest UX win, smallest surface).
• It.2 — Plan tab: move markup tools + space dialogs + labels drag + openings editing under Plan; colored frame indicator.
• It.3 — Devices tab: drag + direct-edit click + filtering tools under Devices.
• It.4+: follow-up features 1–5 above, each its own release.

Kiosk mode (v1.41.0)

kiosk: true on the card is the fourth interaction surface: the full View experience with the header removed and editors hard-blocked (even for admins). Swipe switches spaces at 1:1 zoom only (zoomed gestures pan; double tap resets zoom); cycle: N auto-advances spaces with a 60 s pause after any touch; a 3 s long-press on empty plan opens the per-screen size popover (localStorage). Nav persistence never restores an editor here.