Better styling for tree items that are actions

[isidorn]

We offer Tree API that encourages using Tree Items as actions. However these items are not well styled, and easily blend in to the rest of the tree.
The azure extension is using the tree item actions to the extreme and I find the experience a bit confusing.

Compared that to the debug tree item action styling

@alexr00 based on API we can always detect this items, right?
@misolori do you have ideas on how to improve the styling.

I think we should be consistent between debug and what we do here. Maybe we even start with the debug syling?

fyi @fiveisprime @bwateratmsft ideally when we improve this, then your actions will not need the "Click to" part of the text

[bwateratmsft]

Having the text be link-blue, with an underline that appears when hovering, I think would go a long way. However, I wouldn't necessarily want that to be the case for all tree items that have a command attached--for example, for Azure resources with no associated extension, clicking will display the JSON properties returned by the ARM SDK. Thus, all of those resources have commands, but it would look weird if they were all blue.

[alexr00]

Yes, we can tell from the API whether a tree item has a command for when clicked. However, it's also very normal for regular tree items to have commands too, not just buttons. For example, in the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues extension, we open diffs on click.

We could say that if it's the last tree item and it has an action then we give it special styling, but I think that could be too error prone. Instead, we should have new API that indicates that the tree item should have link/button styling.

[usernamehw]

Why not a subset of Markdown in the TreeView? #115365 (comment) (strikethrough, italic, bold, inline code, link)

[miguelsolorio]

I also think the results, 3 of 9... should be moved into the view title description, which leaves plenty of room for a Show All action.

we should have new API that indicates that the tree item should have link/button styling

I think this sounds like a perfect plan as extensions can opt-into this behavior

[alexr00]

Why not a subset of Markdown in the TreeView? #115365 (comment) (strikethrough, italic, bold, inline code, link)

Having tree items that are really buttons is a common use case for extensions. Rather than force each extension to individually decide what a button should look like, I would prefer to give extensions a pre-defined way to make tree items look like buttons. This will give us better UX consistency for the user in addition to making it easier for extension authors.

[isidorn]

@misolori good point.
@bwateratmsft @fiveisprime what do you think about Miguel's proposal to use the description API for a better way to decorate additional info in tree views. I think it will look cleaner.

[bwateratmsft]

I think it's a good idea and probably something we should do now. I'll let @fiveisprime comment on whether that goes "far enough", I don't feel strongly one way or the other.

[fiveisprime]

Yeah, that sounds good to me. So, we'll include the n of n in the description then have an option to style the action as a link, right?

[isidorn]

@fiveisprime yes

[vscodenpa]

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