Toggle is a user interface element that lets the user update preferences or settings, often with immediate results. When toggles are designed well, they are simple and straightforward to use, and they help users make more informed decisions about what features to enable or disable. Toggle switches should have direct labels, use standard visual design and deliver obvious results. It’s important that the design of toggle switches matches other user interface components, like buttons and menu items, to ensure consistency and clarity across the system.
Operation Toggles
Many teams rely on feature toggles to experiment with new functionality before rolling it out to all users. Using toggles to introduce functionality in small increments helps reduce the risk of a potentially polarizing feature being rolled out to the entire user base with negative impact. Feature toggles also serve as circuit breakers in the event of high-latency or other operational issues, temporarily disabling non-critical functionality for a small segment of the user base until the problem is resolved.
There are various ways to manage toggle configuration, ranging from hardcoding via comments through to the more sophisticated use of an existing application’s DB. However, once a large number of toggles have been deployed using a static file based approach it becomes challenging to modify these configurations consistently and at scale. As a result, it’s common for teams to move toggle configuration into some form of centralized store or admin UI that allows product and engineering managers to view and modify feature flags and their associated configuration.
