[no merge pls] versioning exploration

[shainaraskas]

notes from #336

[This PR will evolve - it's not a proposal]

For now this is a place for discussion and ideas on options we have to call out content applicability at:

• the page level
• the section level
• the paragraph/line level
• inline

Most likely dimensions to call out are:

• Environment type (ECE, Elastic Cloud {incl. Cloud Hosted and Serverless}, Self-managed)
• UI/stack version (Serverless, Stack 9.x, Stack 9.y, ...)
• product/feature lifecycle stage (tech preview, beta, ga, deprecated, removed)

Observations:

• These docs are for stack 9+, ECE 4.0+. The applies frontmatter needs to provide a way to indicate this instead of a single version. For instance, stack: ga "From 9.0.0"
• Features can be at different lifecycle stages depending on their environment. What is the best place to communicate this? Is the "this content applies to" badge a good place? Not very elaborate example in Explore and Analyze > Discover > Search sessions
• Features can differ from one version to another, or between stack and serverless. Sometimes it's just a setting or two, sometimes there are tiny implications in multiple places, which can make a page harder to read, and could also make one deployment option some kind of outlier, which is probably counter-productive at some levels. Tabs or breaking pages into 2 pages seem better in terms of readability and clarity than inline notes or callouts. See some options under Deploy and Manage > Manage spaces

[shainaraskas]

preview
shaina version with blended strategy:

• When a process differs, use tabs
• When a one-line fact differs, use one bullet for stack one bullet for serverless (don't "prefer" one over the other)
• When a feature is unavailable inline, I have moved the brackets to the end of the sentence. Long term, I'd like to see this being done with applies tags
• For processes that are very different across multiple procedures, or for very complex pages that are already heavily using tabs and other tools we use for versioning differences, consider using multiple pages. (see example of cloud and serverless billing dimensions)
• We can also use applies tags at the heading level for processes unique to serverless or stateful (see example)

[florent-leborgne]

I like this solution, it alleviates some of my concern regarding scalability over time, but not totally. For example, this feature has also evolved on the stack side during version 8.x. I'm not fully convinced that multiplying bullet points throughout the page will scale nicely over time for features with very active development.

[leemthompo]

I have similar concerns about sustainability and scaling but I think the blended strategy could be a great start in 9.0

[shainaraskas]

preview
multi-page exploration

[shainaraskas]

preview
tab exploration

[shainaraskas]

preview
callout exploration

[florent-leborgne]

👎 callouts aren't a great UX for this type of information nor very good strategically

[shainaraskas]

I think callouts might still have a place in some cases. here are some examples:

if a feature is managed by a deployment type for you, you might want to use a tip to call it out so people understand why a deployment type is not listed in the "applies to"

entire sections might need to be added to explain "managed" elements in some areas too

sorry for ugly screenshots of gdoc

[florent-leborgne]

Yep but I think this is slightly different than in the space example where I reserved them just for highlighting serverless differences.