Allow Exosphere deployers / cloud operators to inject Markdown on specific pages
Problem/Opportunity Statement
In specific: @beckbw noted that people don't know how to use the data science workbench (a.k.a. "workflow" or "Binder workflow") feature in Exosphere. This is partly because the feature is "experimental" and we haven't documented it (#561). Jetstream2 made their own documentation. Reasonably, they want to link to this documentation from the relevant part of Exosphere so that users will discover it.
In general: an Exosphere deployer or cloud operator may want to show specific content (help text, link to cloud-specific docs, etc) on specific pages in the app.
What would success / a fix look like?
Suggestion:
-
On each page of the app, designate a spot in the view to show optional content defined by the deployer / cloud operator. Maybe this is plumbed into the outer (non-page-specific) view code, to avoid having to duplicate code to display it on each page. Whatever works. -
Allow Exosphere deployers to define optional Markdown (e.g. text with some links) to show up on each page. Probably in the clouds
configuration section, because this advice will be cloud-specific. -
Document how to configure this. -
Configure this for Jetstream Cloud; this will serve as a reference / example for other deployers.
My only concern is that the ability to add arbitrary content to the page (and links to docs) opens the door to leaning on docs to do the work that a more-polished, more-helpful UI should be doing instead. Users get less burned out if the UI is good enough to not require docs. So, this is a feature that must be used responsibly.