Add primary shortcut and menu item to toggle visibility of all side panels

[bompstable]

Your idea

Add a primary keyboard shortcut and menu item that allows all displayed side panels to be hidden and restored in one action.

Problem to be solved

At present, if you have multiple side-panels displayed (eg Properties, Layout and Palettes) and want to quickly get more screen space you have to hide each panel individually. For me, this typically involves using the various F shortcuts, and thus I end up pressing F7, F8, F9 etc multiple times. Often I don't remember exactly which F key controls which panel, so this process often also involves accidentally showing another panel, when I'm actually trying to hide what I already have. This is laborious and annoying.

Prior art

Many applications treat all their side panels as tabs in a single sidebar and provide functionality to quickly show and hide that sidebar in one shot.

Additional context

@Tantacrul requested this feature in #10484 (comment) but I can't find an issue that was created to cover this.

Checklist

• This request follows the guidelines for reporting issues
• I have verified that this feature request has not been logged before, by searching the issue tracker for similar requests

[MarcSabatella]

I agree this would be nice (hence my having submitted the issue you link to - and to me this one one is a duplicated of).

But meanwhile, there is a simpler way than doing things one at a time - use the control in the bottom toolbar to create a new workspace, and have all the panels closed in there. I have one where I also close the toolbars themselves. I have a shortcut defined to open the workspaces dialog. Then it's easy to switch between my normal and "presentation" workspaces.

[bompstable]

@MarcSabatella Thanks for the tip. I've not noticed workspaces until now.

Note, I created this new issue as the implementation of the other seems to have gone in a different direction and has since been closed.

[MarcSabatella]

Ah, sorry, I didn't notice it was closed. I guess that is because the main portion - about a shortcut for the Instruments panel - was implemented, so that makes sense. Yes, I still agree a shortcut specifically for the sidebar as a whole would still be useful. Even better might be a way to make it collapsible.

[bkunda]

Something for @jessjwilliamson to factor in her new UI mode design project.

[bompstable]

Yes, fully collapsible and resizable would both be very welcome.