A toggle is a switch that has two states, on and off. It’s often used to control system settings, preferences and other types of information.
Toggles should be easy to understand, using clear labels that describe what a toggle does when it’s on and what a toggle does when it’s off. They should also be consistent with other controls on your site or app.
Color is an important visual signifier for toggles. When designing toggles, ensure that they are readable at all times and always use high contrast colors to signal state change.
Whether a toggle is on or off should be communicated to users with direct labels that are easily understood by all stakeholders in the project. This includes testers and product managers.
It should also be possible to see immediate results when a toggle is changed. This is important for a number of reasons, including the fact that toggles are usually a quick way to update preferences or settings.
In-memory re-configuration of toggle configuration can be very useful for test environments. If a toggle needs to be flipped on or off at runtime, it’s much easier to do this when the toggle is configured in-memory rather than having to restart the process to make the change.
There are many ways to manage toggle configuration, from simple static files through to a highly sophisticated distributed configuration system. Whichever approach is chosen, it should be possible to re-configure toggles at runtime from the same application endpoint that enables other re-configuration and testing tasks.
