Resolve comments in Visual Studio

[meaghanlewis]

Background

On github.com, there is an option to "Resolve conversation" for all comments.

This option exists both when viewing a comment in the conversation view and diff view.

Once comments are resolved, they are displayed differently.

In the conversation view:

• the comments are no longer visible by default and must be expanded to see.
  
• expanding the comments shows the option to Unresolve conversation and who marked the comment as resolved
  

In the diff view:

• the comment is not visible by default and just shows who marked the comment as resolved
  
• expanding the comment will also show the option to Unresolve conversation
  

Once comments are unresolved, they go back to there original state and default display.

Problem

While this functionality exists on github.com, it does not in GitHub for Visual Studio. There can be discrepancies between conversations that have been resolved on github.com and it can also cause confusion to someone reviewing pull requests with conversations that are no longer relevant.

Solution

Add same option in Visual Studio to Resolve and Unresolve conversations from both the diff view and conversation view (once it is implemented).

[donokuda]

I went ahead and created a few prototypes to get a feel of resolving conversations in Visual Studio. I followed the patterns that are established on dotcom and tweaked them so they look and feel at home in Visual Studio.

Resolving in conversation view (Figma Prototype):

Resolving in inline view (Figma Prototype)

Resolving in inline view with multiple conversations (Figma Prototype)

I had to tweak how conversations are visually grouped so that they are easier to parse:

I originally had a less boxy version, but it was confusing which conversation the "resolved banner" was referring to. By boxing them more, I'm hoping this would reduce some initial confusion. This is also closer to how dotcom treats conversations.

If we feel like this is a reasonable direction to go, we'll have to do a few visual tweaks to the CommentView.xaml file.