[navigation-refactor] Style based approach for the three pane layout

[adamgrzybowski]

Details

This is the implementation of the style based approach for the three pane layout.

Instead of using ThreePaneView to achieve the wide layout we are using styles to adjust positions of the cards in the StackView. Doing it this way we don't have to remount the NavigationContainer after resizing.

react-navigation patch

This PR has a patch for react-navigation to not detach the Home screen even if the navigator has the detachInactiveScreens option. It's necessary to keep rendering the Home screen in wide view even if we have more screens on the stack.

This is hardcoded for our structure for now but we are planning to create a feature and push it upstream to have an option to disable detaching for specific screens. We may want to create an issue for that @mountiny

Performance

During testing with @WoLewicki, we did notice that if the user pushes a bigger number of chats on the stack, the animations may be a little laggy. For my computer, this starts to happen somewhere around 20 chats.

We were searching for the cause but we didn't find anything specific. We came to the conclusion that:

1. Previously used ThreePaneView is much leaner than StackView. But to remove the necessity to remount NavigationContainer on resize we need to use StackView in both, narrow and wide layouts.
2. Animations of RHP instead of just showing/hiding make any performance issues more visible.

Additionally, we found a screen that always has problems with performance. It's the profile screen with routes like a/:id
We may want to create an issue to figure out why the first render of this screen is so slow and look for optimization or add a loading state.

Fixed Issues

$ #20404
$ #22372

Tests

• run npm install to make sure the patch is applied

• Test if the inputs keep the state after resizing e.g. input on the search screen.

• Test if RHP is animating properly

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

Offline tests

QA Steps

• Verify that no errors appear in the JS console

PR Author Checklist

• I linked the correct issue in the ### Fixed Issues section above
• I wrote clear testing steps that cover the changes made in this PR
  • I added steps for local testing in the Tests section
  • I added steps for the expected offline behavior in the Offline steps section
  • I added steps for Staging and/or Production testing in the QA steps section
  • I added steps to cover failure scenarios (i.e. verify an input displays the correct error message if the entered data is not correct)
  • I turned off my network connection and tested it while offline to ensure it matches the expected behavior (i.e. verify the default avatar icon is displayed if app is offline)
  • I tested this PR with a High Traffic account against the staging or production API to ensure there are no regressions (e.g. long loading states that impact usability).
• I included screenshots or videos for tests on all platforms
• I ran the tests on all platforms & verified they passed on:
  • Android / native
  • Android / Chrome
  • iOS / native
  • iOS / Safari
  • MacOS / Chrome / Safari
  • MacOS / Desktop
• I verified there are no console errors (if there's a console error not related to the PR, report it or open an issue for it to be fixed)
• I followed proper code patterns (see Reviewing the code)
  • I verified that any callback methods that were added or modified are named for what the method does and never what callback they handle (i.e. toggleReport and not onIconClick)
  • I verified that the left part of a conditional rendering a React component is a boolean and NOT a string, e.g. myBool && <MyComponent />.
  • I verified that comments were added to code that is not self explanatory
  • I verified that any new or modified comments were clear, correct English, and explained "why" the code was doing something instead of only explaining "what" the code was doing.
  • I verified any copy / text shown in the product is localized by adding it to src/languages/* files and using the translation method
    • If any non-english text was added/modified, I verified the translation was requested/reviewed in #expensify-open-source and it was approved by an internal Expensify engineer. Link to Slack message:
  • I verified all numbers, amounts, dates and phone numbers shown in the product are using the localization methods
  • I verified any copy / text that was added to the app is grammatically correct in English. It adheres to proper capitalization guidelines (note: only the first word of header/labels should be capitalized), and is approved by marketing by adding the Waiting for Copy label for a copy review on the original GH to get the correct copy.
  • I verified proper file naming conventions were followed for any new files or renamed files. All non-platform specific files are named after what they export and are not named "index.js". All platform-specific files are named for the platform the code supports as outlined in the README.
  • I verified the JSDocs style guidelines (in STYLE.md) were followed
• If a new code pattern is added I verified it was agreed to be used by multiple Expensify engineers
• I followed the guidelines as stated in the Review Guidelines
• I tested other components that can be impacted by my changes (i.e. if the PR modifies a shared library or component like Avatar, I verified the components using Avatar are working as expected)
• I verified all code is DRY (the PR doesn't include any logic written more than once, with the exception of tests)
• I verified any variables that can be defined as constants (ie. in CONST.js or at the top of the file that uses the constant) are defined as such
• I verified that if a function's arguments changed that all usages have also been updated correctly
• If a new component is created I verified that:
  • A similar component doesn't exist in the codebase
  • All props are defined accurately and each prop has a /** comment above it */
  • The file is named correctly
  • The component has a clear name that is non-ambiguous and the purpose of the component can be inferred from the name alone
  • The only data being stored in the state is data necessary for rendering and nothing else
  • If we are not using the full Onyx data that we loaded, I've added the proper selector in order to ensure the component only re-renders when the data it is using changes
  • For Class Components, any internal methods passed to components event handlers are bound to this properly so there are no scoping issues (i.e. for onClick={this.submit} the method this.submit should be bound to this in the constructor)
  • Any internal methods bound to this are necessary to be bound (i.e. avoid this.submit = this.submit.bind(this); if this.submit is never passed to a component event handler like onClick)
  • All JSX used for rendering exists in the render method
  • The component has the minimum amount of code necessary for its purpose, and it is broken down into smaller components in order to separate concerns and functions
• If any new file was added I verified that:
  • The file has a description of what it does and/or why is needed at the top of the file if the code is not self explanatory
• If a new CSS style is added I verified that:
  • A similar style doesn't already exist
  • The style can't be created with an existing StyleUtils function (i.e. StyleUtils.getBackgroundAndBorderStyle(themeColors.componentBG))
• If the PR modifies code that runs when editing or sending messages, I tested and verified there is no unexpected behavior for all supported markdown - URLs, single line code, code blocks, quotes, headings, bold, strikethrough, and italic.
• If the PR modifies a generic component, I tested and verified that those changes do not break usages of that component in the rest of the App (i.e. if a shared library or component like Avatar is modified, I verified that Avatar is working as expected in all cases)
• If the PR modifies a component related to any of the existing Storybook stories, I tested and verified all stories for that component are still working as expected.
• If a new page is added, I verified it's using the ScrollView component to make it scrollable when more elements are added to the page.
• If the main branch was merged into this PR after a review, I tested again and verified the outcome was still expected according to the Test steps.
• I have checked off every checkbox in the PR author checklist, including those that don't apply to this PR.

Screenshots/Videos

Web

web.mov

Mobile Web - Chrome

androidWeb.mov

Mobile Web - Safari

iosWeb.mov

Desktop

desktop.mov

iOS

ios.mov

Android

android.mov

[mountiny]

Will this also solve the problem with the RHP not animating when opening and closing right? Can we add that issue to the fixed issues section too and include it in testing once we move this further?

[adamgrzybowski]

Will this also solve the problem with the RHP not animating when opening and closing right? Can we add that issue to the fixed issues section too and include it in testing once we move this further?

Yes, animations for the RHP should work now

[mountiny]

nice added the issue link to the PR body

[melvin-bot]

@mananjadhav Please copy/paste the Reviewer Checklist from here into a new comment on this PR and complete it. If you have the K2 extension, you can simply click: [this button]

[mountiny]

@mananjadhav Are you able to prioritize this review and testing? its important PR, thanks!

[mountiny]

The performance findings are not great.

We need to think of our Guides who have hundreds of policies and during a day they can go through hundreds of chats. Will this make the app unusable for them? @WoLewicki @adamgrzybowski

[mananjadhav]

@mountiny I would take 1 day to start the review, feel free to reassign if this more urgent to be reviewed earlier.

[WoLewicki]

@mountiny I think the performance issue is also present in the current solution, when you push many reports to the stack, you can see that typing etc. becomes slower and slower. I believe right now it is just more visible with the animation of RHP present. I think all the communicators suffer from getting slower and slower until you reload the page, so I wouldn't see it as so much of a blocker.

On the other hand, I think we should revisit the problem of infinite pushing of the screens to the stack imo since this would resolve this performance problem.

[mananjadhav]

@mountiny I can start this one, I can see it's not picked by anybody else. Want me to check this?

[roryabraham]

@mananjadhav go ahead 👍🏼

[melvin-bot]

@mountiny looks like this was merged without a test passing. Please add a note explaining why this was done and remove the Emergency label if this is not an emergency.

[shubham1206agra]

@adamgrzybowski Can you put in the description to do npm install?

[OSBotify]

🚀 Deployed to staging by https://github.com/mountiny in version: 1.3.60-0 🚀

platform	result
🤖 android 🤖	success ✅
🖥 desktop 🖥	success ✅
🍎 iOS 🍎	failure ❌
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅

[OSBotify]

🚀 Deployed to staging by https://github.com/mountiny in version: 1.3.60-0 🚀

platform	result
🤖 android 🤖	success ✅
🖥 desktop 🖥	success ✅
🍎 iOS 🍎	success ✅
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅

[mountiny]

The tests were passing

[mountiny]

@shubham1206agra updated the instructions

[mvtglobally]

@adamgrzybowski @mountiny Anything specific needed to QA here?

[mountiny]

@mvtglobally nothing specific really, this already had the QA regression done before merging, we might be able to link some issue back to this if there are some weird issues found during the regression test suite testing

[arosiclair]

There is a merge freeze in place, but this is a major QOL improvement and Applause already did full regression testing on this PR so I hope this wont have major downsides.

I appreciate trying to be thorough with testing, but this definitely should not have been merged

[mountiny]

@arosiclair I was on a fence with this one but my reasoning was:

• it fixes all the issues with state being lost on resize
• it adds animation to opening and closing the RHP which makes the app feel nicer
• Applause did a full regression test suite on web and mobile and found no issues

apologies if there will be something critical hard to resolve, I hope that would be caught with the regression testing

[OSBotify]

🚀 Deployed to production by https://github.com/luacmartins in version: 1.3.60-3 🚀

platform	result
🤖 android 🤖	success ✅
🖥 desktop 🖥	success ✅
🍎 iOS 🍎	success ✅
🕸 web 🕸	success ✅

[dangrous]

Hi all! Figured I'd explicitly call out #26421 - landscape iPad layout is weird now - as a new regression that stems from this; I'll be investigating as well but since I'm coming into this a little cold - if you have any thoughts they are welcome!

[hungvu193]

@mountiny I believe this is the RCA of the issue, you've just created

[mountiny]

Thanks!

[parasharrajat]

Why are we pushing the whole navigation to the right with marginLeft?

Then later reset it with transform on screens.

[parasharrajat]

cc: @allroundexperts @mananjadhav @adamgrzybowski @aimane-chnaif

I am looking into this issue #31573. We do have a solution #31573 (comment). But I am trying to understand this better.

[parasharrajat]

any ideas on above query?

[parasharrajat]

Transforming interferes with the native browser selection functionality which caused #31573

Luckily we can use marginLeft here which works fine.