The main issue with the new Sidebar UX is how the user rearranges the sidebars by dragging their buttons around the bottom of the screen. There is no obvious correlation between the tab bar buttons and whether the sidebar is in the top or bottom position. The drag behaviour is also buggy (#5575). Feedback has not been kind (polite, but damning).

The reason I went with dragging the buttons is that it was the least disruptive task to achieve from an engineering time perspective. The result hasn't paid off.

The proper solution is to allow the user to drag the panels around directly. This is a much more intuitive and expected behaviour.

I have a POC almost working of the basic interation. Rather than skunk works it, raising the issue to capture the tasks I need to resolve to deliver this feature.

Make sidebar panels draggable

1. add invisible handle to the top of each sidebar section
2. when dragged, show an overlay with the possible sidebar drop-target positions
3. when dropped on a target, move the sidebar
4. when dropped off a target, cancel the move

Screenshot of POC - the exactly styling is work in progress.

Tab bar buttons

1. Get rid of the separate sidebar tab bars.
2. Have a single, right-aligned tab bar in the bottom status bar
3. Allow LH sidebar to reclaim the vertical space now available
4. Allow tab bar buttons to be draggable to reorder - but this doesn't change the position of the sidebars themselves.
5. Update the collapsed menu to include all sidebars
6. Add a show/hide button for each sidebar somewhere