Add a feature banner to hosted VSCode

[loujaybee]

The release of https://vscode.dev/ came with an update banner shown above the IDE.

This would be useful functionality to have in Gitpod to surface news, features, or general announcements.

We have similar functionality in the Gitpod website used for announcements. We should also consider the banner to have a start and/or end date so that it does not need to be manually added or removed / deployed.

See (internal link)

CC: @mikenikles (incase you have additional notes to add 🙏 )

[mikenikles]

Awesome sauce :)! We can create a special /changelog/latest endpoint on the marketing website so that the link in the banner does not need to be updated.

If we want release-specific content in the banner, let me know and we can expose an API endpoint to provide changelog content in JSON format.

[akosyakov]

I think we should first replace Release Notes with proper content. Right now it show something about Code OSS, then it will be aligned with VS Code Desktop experience, i.e. whenever there is a new changelog page and user did not see it VS Code will present it. It is configurable in product.json: https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server/blob/b4c93f562e970677c638852ff45418d9fd09004b/src/vs/base/common/product.ts#L105-L106

[loujaybee]

This could actually be re-purposed for different use-cases, such as providing:

1. A logical path back to the dashboard (this was an issue observed in usability testing)
2. Helping users to understand their workspace context, e.g. Please use a useful workspace name instead of a nonsensical one #4129 and Display Gitpod context prominently in UI #6227

[imskr]

Can I work on this?

[loujaybee]

@imskr - Sure, if you want to provide some details here of what you plan, we can try to collaborate before you spend invest too much time in a PR. 🙏 Also linking related roadmap item: #7537

Removing from inbox for now.

[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.