readthedocs flyout become invisible on big screens if the primary sidebar is hidden

[12rambau]

demonstated from trailets documentation: https://traitlets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/api.html

[jemissik]

I have 3 projects using the pydata-sphinx-theme, and for all of them the readthedocs flyout is invisible now. For my projects it seems that this is happening on all screens, not just large screens.

[trallard]

@jemissik could you drop a link to those projects so we can have a look on those too? 🙏🏽

[12rambau]

The problem is the same for all of them. The js script adding the rdt flyout is using the placeholder of the primary sidebar. This bar always exist as it can be reached on small screen whatever the page. But for these specific pages (mostly landing page) user hide it using the trick from the doc. consequence, the flyout is catch, placed in the sidebar and then the sidebar is hidden, making it unreachable.

• https://traitlets.readthedocs.io/en/stable/api.html
• https://docs.sepal.io/en/latest/

I think the easiest way to proceed would be to finally place the RDT flyout in the navbar (#705) for documentation that use only this one.

It would be harmless for people relying on the JS version switcher because they usually don't want to expose the RDT one (which would then remain where it is in the hidden sidebar)

[drammock]

This part of what @jemissik says is troublesome:

For my projects it seems that this is happening on all screens, not just large screens.

on the traitlets and sepal sites that @12rambau shared, the RTD switcher does show up on narrower windows/screens (at the bottom of the sidebar, once you expand the sidebar). @jemissik can you clarify whether your sites are the same as traitlets/sepal, or if you truly can't see the RTD switcher at all (even after expanding the sidebar on narrow screens)?

[jemissik]

The problem for my projects seems to be the same as for traitlets/sepal; the trouble is that the left sidebar is hidden for some pages if the screen is a normal size.

Here is an example:
https://boa-framework.readthedocs.io/en/0.6.2/

I pinned pydata_sphinx_theme<0.12.0 for all of my projects a while ago until this issue is solved, and for my other two projects I don't have the old builds active on RTD. But I believe they all had the same behavior.

[12rambau]

while we work on providing support to move the RDT flyout in the header I think the best workaround is to add the version swithcer describe in our documentation (which will not disapear as you cannot get rid of the header navbar).
As this workaround exist I'll remove the block-release issue on this one and continue to work on it.