Hope you're sitting down, because this one is big.. To unblock #3097, #2699, #1761, #590 and many others, I'm going to add a taskbar to iD.

iD works well because we work hard to keep it simple. We don't want to add buttons or menus or toolbars. UI scope creep is something that I take very seriously. I think about this probably more than people realize.

However we are running into a bunch of situations where we want to add useful things to iD but we have no good place to put them. Building drawing. Indoor editing. Repeat tags. And other stuff. Maybe someday plugins.

These things are not "modes" in the traditional iD sense. Modes are exclusive and they live on the top bar:

It would be really easy to add more buttons here - but we shouldn't.

Tasks

If they aren't modes, what are they? I'm calling them tasks, to differentiate them from modes. Modes are exclusive, tasks are not. For example, take "square drawing":

1. It should be toggle-able with UI. I'm not going to make this a key combination, because that is not discoverable, and I would like for somebody on a surface pro with a pen to be able to draw square buildings just as easily as somebody with a dedicated shift key.
2. It should be visible. Users should not forget that it is on. It needs an icon someplace visible but out of the way that can be tapped when the user says "I'm done drawing square things". A feature like this should not be hidden in a drawer like the Background or Map Data toggles.

Repeat after me: "Modes are exclusive, Tasks are not." This runs a bit contrary to how non-programmers think about the world, but we already have "modes" in iD so let's just run with it.

The Taskbar

The taskbar / notification area metaphor is something that is, by now, universally understood. You probably have a taskbar on your screen now.

If you use Windows, it looks like this:

If you use Mac, you have this:

These are icons that you don't need to pay attention to, but are there when you need them.

Did you know: iD has something that looks like a taskbar already:

But this is not a taskbar. These are just some interesting (or not really) links. This confuses people because it looks like a taskbar but is not one.

I am proposing to move these interesting links into the Help pane, and use this space as a for-real taskbar.

An empty taskbar will just have a single icon that opens up a drawer from the bottom. That drawer can contain all kinds of things that can be toggled on and off - and when on, an icon for that thing will appear on the taskbar. Simple. Users can ignore it if they want to. And someday plugins can add themselves there. And we don't need to touch any of the other iD UI that we love.

I'm going to keep saying taskbar to build acceptance around this idea. Because changing the UI in iD is scary. Taskbar. Here are some bar-related emojis to make this idea less scary: 😉 📊 🍫 💈 🍸

Thanks for listening!