A toggle is a switch that lets people manage the state of something—like a setting, view, or piece of content. Toggles are typically displayed as buttons with a different appearance for each state they are in, which is helpful to communicate their role. Toggle buttons also typically have text to help people understand what state they are in.
For this reason it’s a good idea to make sure a toggle is clearly visible and can be easily clicked, ideally in an area that isn’t blocked by other interactive elements or by other navigation. In many cases this means a toggle is placed in a section of the page that isn’t affected by a header or footer, or that doesn’t display any article previews.
Using static files to manage toggle configuration becomes cumbersome at scale and can impact your ability to run continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes. Many teams prefer to move the management of toggle configuration into some type of centralized store, often an existing application DB. This is usually accompanied by the build-out of some form of admin UI which allows system operators, testers and product managers to view and modify feature flag configuration.
A key aspect of a well-managed toggle is ensuring that it is only flipped On or Off when the appropriate business logic is activated. This may mean that a toggle is only flipped on when a team is ready to release a new version of a feature. It’s also wise to test with all toggles that a team expects to be released flipped On, so that any existing or legacy behavior is exercised as part of the testing process.
