[dashboard] Update What's New modal

[gtsiolis]

Problem

Back in #3297 and #3618, we introduced a What's New modal to inform users about new changes to the dashboard and offer the option to switch their editor to VS Code.

Some more context:

1. The initial plan was to keep this modal for one release and remove it on the next one.
2. In this release we want to inform users about the new dashboard theme that is going to be available.
3. Users should be able to get back to this modal using a What's New button in the profile dropdown.
4. The updates that go in this feed can be quite useful for the Changelog feature we're adding for our website.

Proposal

Let's:

1. Keep the What's New modal and figure out a scalable way to append new updates as well as hide past entries.
2. Use this modal to add an update about the dark theme availability.
3. Hide the past two entries (New Dashboard and Editor Switch) and attach the March 2021 milestone timestamp.
4. Introduce a What's New button on the profile dropdown so that users can trigger the What's New modal.
5. To avoid introducing too much noise, add a small dot indicator on the profile to indicate there's a new update.

Designs

TBD (To be discussed)

[mikenikles]

😍 Happy to see this issue. The 4. context item above is near and dear to me. The more we align messaging between the changelog and the product updates, the better for our users.

Each changelog entry is currently a separate markdown file in https://github.com/gitpod-io/website/tree/main/src/contents/changelog. I'd like to find a way to align and reuse content used in the changelog and the What's New modal.

🤔 Food for thought: We use GitHub releases in gitpod-io/gitpod for all releases, not only self-hosted. The content of the new CHANGELOG.md file in gitpod-io/gitpod moves to the GitHub release page and we use the GitHub API to fetch release information to generate the What's New modal and the changelog on the website. A single source of truth (GitHub releases).

[gtsiolis]

Cross-posting here a comment from a relevant discussion (internal) regarding why this modal is blocking workspace start.

@gtsiolis: In future updates, we could skip blocking workspace startup and show the What’s New modal only when going through the dashboard.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[gtsiolis]

Re-opening as this is still relevant. Feel free to close if needed.

[gtsiolis]

Cross-posting some relevant early design drafts on how this could look like, inlcuding 🍊 user menu from #5806 (comment), 🍋 feedback links from #3403 (comment), and 🥝 an early draft from past exploration.

🍊	🍋	🥝

[mikenikles]

Will someone who clicks an "Open in Gitpod" button see that dialog or do they have to visit the dashboard?

[gtsiolis]

In the past, we've been using this modal for blocking workspace start so users would see that either 🅰️ by visiting the dashboard or 🅱️ by trying to open a workspaces directly from a repository via clicking the Open in Gitpod button, even when prefixing the repository with gitpod.io/#.

Ideally, we could define 🅰️ which of these udpates would be blocking that require users to confirm or dismiss and 🅱️ which silently populate this new what's new section where the red dot signifier could help inform the users about new updates. 💭

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.