AI scroll-lock suggestions

[dannaf]

Feature Description:

While it's nice that the Theia AI chat window already has implemented a scroll lock that can be manually pressed, I suggest that it would be natural and much more useful if, in addition to manual control over it, there would be a default behavior by which the scroll lock is automatically activated when the user scrolls up while an answer is being generated (or any time when scrolling up, due to the next bit) and reengages when the user presses enter to ask another question.

(And there should ideally be an option to not re-engage upon pressing enter, e.g. if the user manually locked, as opposed to automatically locking, then it should remain locked; this might be useful e.g. when want to continue reading one response while meanwhile getting another question asked and generated, without scrolling down to it.)

[JonasHelming]

@planger WDYT?

[planger]

Thanks @dannaf! I agree that the current manual approach isn't enough for a great experience and your suggestion sounds great.

What do you about the following minor adjustment -- replacing the suggested behavior on enter to ask another question:
Given we are in the auto-locked state (user scrolled up) and we are currently generating (either because of a new message the user sent or because it is still generating while the user scrolled up), we show a down button above the input field and, once pressed, automatically scroll down and activate auto-scrolling again?

[dannaf]

Yes, I think something like that is probably even better.

Ideally there would also be a keyboard shortcut, in addition to a mouse-clickable down arrow. Eg perhaps pressing Enter on a blank question prompt would reengage the autoscroll down? Or double-Enter might be better?

Although, actually maybe this is not so critical because if the user 'scrolled up' then the user is already with a hand on the mouse, presimably, so he or she could easily-enough mouseclick the down arrow you mentioned. But I supposed this brings in the additional question of if we want to support page up and page down keyboard shortcuts for scrolling in the AI chat window, this could be good (not sure if that's currently supported, I'm on my phone currently). If there is such support then I would say there should also be a double-enter-or-something keyboard shortcut for reengaging the all-the-way-down scroll, beyond a single page-down button press and without requiring mouse use.