iptvnator/docs/architecture/iptvnator-ui-guidelines.md

IPTVnator UI Guidelines

This document captures the current UI language used across IPTVnator, with emphasis on channel lists, EPG views, settings surfaces, and shared selection patterns.

Use it when changing existing views or introducing new list-based UI in the workspace, Xtream, or Stalker flows.

Core Principles

1. Prefer shared components over duplicated markup. The canonical channel row is app-channel-list-item.

2. Drive emphasis through selection state, not through constant decoration. Neutral rows should stay quiet. Only active or current items should pick up strong color.

3. Use the same selection language everywhere. Selected nav items, channels, and current EPG cards should feel like the same system.

4. Keep dark and light themes intentionally different. Dark theme can carry more density and tinted surfaces. Light theme should be flatter and cleaner, with white or near-white cards.

5. Scroll ownership must be explicit. Headers stay visible. Lists scroll. Do not let nested panes compete for scroll.

Canonical References

• Channel row: libs/ui/components/src/lib/channel-list-container/channel-list-item/channel-list-item.component.html
• Channel row styles: libs/ui/components/src/lib/channel-list-container/channel-list-item/channel-list-item.component.scss
• Shared EPG timeline: libs/ui/epg/src/lib/epg-timeline/epg-timeline.component.html
• Shared EPG timeline styles: libs/ui/epg/src/lib/epg-timeline/epg-timeline.component.scss
• Shared EPG list: libs/ui/epg/src/lib/epg-list-view/epg-list-view.component.ts
• Shared EPG list styles: libs/ui/epg/src/lib/epg-list-view/epg-list-view.component.scss
• Shared list selection style: libs/ui/styles/_nav-list.scss
• Theme tokens: apps/web/src/m3-theme.scss
• Settings surfaces: apps/web/src/app/settings/settings.component.scss
• Detail view shell styles: libs/ui/styles/_detail-view.scss

Shared Tokens

These tokens are the base for interactive emphasis:

• --app-selection-color
• --app-selection-on-color
• --app-selection-surface
• --app-selection-surface-strong
• --app-selection-border
• --app-selection-glow

Use the app's own surface tokens for neutral surfaces (defined for both themes in apps/web/src/m3-theme.scss):

• --app-shell-bg / --app-rail-bg / --app-header-bg / --app-content-bg
• --app-widget-bg / --app-widget-header-bg — panels and popovers
• --app-card-hover-bg — raised or hovered rows
• --app-widget-border / --app-rail-border — hairlines
• --app-on-surface — primary text
• --app-eyebrow-color — secondary/muted text

Angular Material mixins and Material-component overrides may use the tokens owned by that component. Outside a Material-owned component, prefer the app-owned tokens above.

Both themes are built with the legacy mat.define-theme config, whose component mixins never declare the --mat-sys-* system variables. The theme therefore adds the mat.system-level-* mixins for the light (html) and dark (.dark-theme) contexts, and apps/electron-backend-e2e/src/theme-tokens.e2e.ts asserts they resolve in both. Use a --mat-sys-* token for Material-derived roles that have no app token (error, outline, surface containers); keep app chrome on --app-*.

Set Material component tokens through the component's mat.*-overrides() mixin: it rejects unknown names at build time, where a hand-written --mat-* declaration with a typo fails silently. Material 22 reads only --mat-* tokens, so the retired --mdc-* names compile but do nothing; pnpm run styles:material-tokens:validate (CI) rejects them. A stylesheet that a spec loads as raw CSS cannot use Sass modules; it declares the --mat-* token directly and says why.

Existing hard-coded layout and selection colors are migration debt, not patterns to copy.

Do not hardcode unrelated accent colors for selected state when these tokens already exist.

Player And EPG Theme Boundaries

The native-view Embedded MPV dock is app chrome: its solid widget background, text, separators, sliders and interaction states resolve app tokens together. Material icon buttons override their component tokens, including disabled icons. The dock must never pair a dark fallback surface with inherited light app text. Loader/stall and transient feedback overlays own a light foreground and dark scrim because they cover video. Video viewports remain black in both themes and fullscreen; frame-copy and built-in shared controls keep their light-on-dark overlay palette — the fixed --pc-* token set of the shared dock (accent blue, cyan, violet, the --pc-live / --pc-danger reds and a light text ramp), never the app theme. The overlay styles in player-controls/ never read a --mat-sys-* token, and their keyboard focus is a 2px --pc-text outline rather than Material's theme-coloured focus layer (player-controls-keyboard.e2e.ts checks it in both themes).

EPG timeline, list, empty states and programme details use the library-local libs/ui/epg/src/lib/_epg-theme.scss palette, based on app surfaces, separators, selection and live accents. Text pairs with the actual surface in both themes; current/playing titles must not force white onto a light selection tint. Past programme text remains readable without reducing opacity on the whole card. List loading shimmer uses translucent primary text stops so placeholders remain visible on either theme’s content surface. Theme changes resolve through CSS on the mounted components immediately.

Electron E2E measures app-panel foreground/background contrast (including translucency, ancestor opacity and the timeline’s sibling progress fill), surface brightness and control geometry. Shared overlay icons are separately rasterized over a white test frame to include gradient scrims and Material hover/focus layers in their contrast check. Synthetic media is used for visual artifacts. Native-view video is composited outside Chromium screenshots, so playback is also verified from session position; a black screenshot viewport alone is not proof of failed decoding.

Selection Pattern

Apply the same visual recipe to selected list items, active channels, and current EPG items:

• Background: linear-gradient(135deg, var(--app-selection-surface-strong), var(--app-selection-surface))
• Border: var(--app-selection-border)
• Glow: outer shadow using var(--app-selection-glow)
• Lift: transform: translateY(-1px) for selected list items only
• Text: selected text should inherit var(--app-selection-color)

Use var(--app-selection-on-color) when text or an icon sits directly on a solid var(--app-selection-color) fill.

Use this pattern for:

• .nav-item.selected / .nav-item.active
• .channel-list-item.active
• .epg-item.current-program

Do not add extra badges, left rails, or second selection systems unless there is a strong reason.

Detail Views

VOD and series detail screens share the detail-view Sass mixin (@mixin base) from libs/ui/styles/_detail-view.scss. Feature-local styles/detail-view.scss files should only @use that module and @include detail-view.base(...) with small typography overrides when a provider needs them.

Do not copy the full detail-view stylesheet into feature libraries. Add shared layout changes to the mixin, and keep provider-specific differences explicit in the wrapper file that includes it.

Electron Drag Regions

Every interactive descendant of a drag region—including buttons, links, inputs, overlays, and resize handles—requires app-region: no-drag. The shared directive-generated .resize-handle sets this centrally in resizable.scss. The shared live-layout sidebar reserves 8 px at its right edge so the inward half of the 12 px resize handle cannot cover the channel scrollbar.

Keyboard Scrolling and Channel Focus

ChannelScrollFocusDirective belongs on the actual channel scroll owner, including virtual viewports and nonvirtual Favorites/Recent/Stalker lists. Pointer selection focuses that owner without moving its scroll position. ArrowUp/Down, PageUp/Down, Home/End and Space retain native scrolling there; scroll keys do not bubble into document-level player shortcuts. A row's main button remains separate from favorite/info actions, supports native Enter and Space activation, and retains keyboard focus on activation. Tab/Shift+Tab use the normal DOM order; Safari's default keyboard preference skips buttons on plain Tab, so there the row button is reached with Option+Tab (WebKit E2E runs press it through pressTab in apps/web-e2e/src/e2e-helpers.ts). Scrolling from a virtual row moves focus to its viewport before CDK can recycle the row; asynchronous data updates never move focus. Xtream aligns a newly selected channel only when it is outside the viewport; updates to the same selected ID never re-align it. A smooth scroll to an already visible row would otherwise cancel an immediate keyboard scroll.

In portal Live TV, ArrowRight on the selected category enters the visible live-channels region; ArrowLeft from that region or a channel's main button returns to the selected category in portal-categories. These IDs identify the single mounted main pane, not fullscreen or overlay lists. Navigation does not select a channel or start playback. Modified shortcuts, input fields, menus, dialogs, player controls and hidden/inert panes keep their own behavior.

Channel List Item

The shared row should be reused instead of rebuilding channel markup per view.

Current Reference Values

• Current minimum height: 68px
• Horizontal gap: 12px
• Padding: 8px 10px 8px 12px
• Radius: 12px
• Current logo shell: 44x44, rounded, subtle inset treatment
• Compact variant: 52px min height with slightly tighter padding

These values describe the current shared row, not a fixed-width contract. Keep the row responsive: the text column uses min-width: 0 and ellipsis, while logos, drag affordances, and trailing actions use flex-shrink: 0. Prefer minimum dimensions and flexible columns over fixed row widths.

Content Layout

• Title is one line, medium-bold, slightly condensed
• Program title is a secondary line with lower emphasis
• Timeline uses three columns: start time, progress bar, end time
• Action buttons sit on the trailing edge and inherit row color

Responsive Information Priority

• EPG-enabled, noncompact rows keep a fixed 68px height that matches the virtual-scroll stride. EPG-disabled, compact rows use a matching fixed 52px row and virtual-scroll size.
• At 310px and below, hide the end time while keeping the start time and progress bar.
• At 270px and below, hide the decorative logo while retaining program context and actions, and tighten horizontal padding to preserve the remaining content.
• At 220px and below, hide the start time while keeping the progress bar.
• In EPG-preview rows, narrow width alone must not remove the channel name, program title or no-program placeholder, progress bar, drag affordance when applicable, or enabled actions.
• Radio consumers without EPG render the row as compact instead of showing a false no-program placeholder. Compact rows keep the logo at 270px, then hide the logo and actions at 220px.
• isRadio alone must not change row height inside a fixed-size mixed virtual list; the consumer's showEpg state and virtual-scroll item size own density.
• Loading skeletons mirror the same responsive hierarchy and row geometry.

Logo Rules

• Show fallback icon only when no image is available or image loading fails
• Do not render placeholder and real logo at the same time
• Keep logos contained with object-fit: contain

Cover Grids

Movie and series covers render in three surfaces: the catalog grid (app-grid-list, libs/portal/shared/ui/.../grid-list/), the favorites / recent card (app-content-card, same lib) and the dashboard rails. All of them size from the --cover-grid-min-width / --cover-rail-width / --cover-gap tokens that Settings.coverSize writes onto <html> as data-cover-size (apps/web/src/_cover-size.scss). The same file carries --season-cover-width (96 / 120 / 144px) for the season cover beside the season tabs on series detail pages; medium equals the About block's 120px poster so browse and watch share one secondary-poster size.

Posters-only wall

Settings.showCoverTitles (Settings > General, default on, only an explicit false opts out — coerced like webPlayerSharedControls) removes the title row under VOD and series covers so the grid shows more rows per screen.

• Resolution. CoverTitlesService.postersOnly (libs/portal/shared/ui) is the single source: the opt-out AND a hover-capable pointer ((any-hover: hover) media query, tracked live). On touch-only devices the preference is ignored and titles stay under the covers, because a tap already opens the item and there is no gesture left to peek at a hidden name.
• Scope. Catalog grids (Xtream/Stalker VOD and series), unified favorites/recent grids and the portal favorites tab. Exempt, regardless of the setting: live channel grids (type live/itv/radio or the logo variant — logos are too often missing to identify a channel), search results and "recently added" rails (they answer by name; hosts pass [allowPostersOnly]="false" to app-content-card; app-grid-list and app-unified-grid-tab drop the wall themselves while their searchTerm input is non-blank, i.e. an in-section search is filtering the list), and the dashboard rails (their meta rows do not fit an overlay).
• Reveal. The title is a .cover-title-overlay inside the poster wrapper: bottom gradient scrim, two clamped lines, 150 ms ease-out opacity, shown on :hover and :focus-visible of the card, none under prefers-reduced-motion. It is aria-hidden; the card itself carries the accessible name.
• Pinned caption. When the item has no cover to identify it — no poster URL, or the image failed and the default poster / placeholder is showing — the overlay is pinned open (--pinned). Both components track failed URLs so the fallback branch re-renders instead of swapping src in place.
• Layout hints. The grid's contain-intrinsic-size drops from 270 px to 222 px (bare 2/3 poster) under .grid-list--posters-only, and the skeleton hides its text lines so loading matches the cards it precedes.
• Keyboard. Both cards expose a role="button", tabindex="0" surface labelled by the title, activated by Enter and Space (Space prevents the page scroll) and carrying a :focus-visible ring (card-focus-ring mixin in libs/ui/styles/_content-grid.scss). On app-content-card that surface is the inner .content-card__activation element, and the Remove control (labelled by removeTooltip) is a SIBLING positioned over the poster corner — an interactive control nested inside a role="button" is an invalid accessibility structure. Its ring is drawn on the OUTER .content-card via :has(> .content-card__activation:focus-visible), because the card's overflow: hidden would clip an outline on the inner surface on every edge. Poster alt is the title, not a literal.

EPG Views

The shared timeline and list still contain local dark surfaces, blue selection accents, and white foregrounds. These non-semantic hard-coded colors are migration debt. New work should use app surface/selection/text tokens and must not spread those local fallbacks. Semantic live, error, and status colors may remain local when the meaning is explicit.

Shared EPG Pane

• Header title stays sticky
• Program list is the only scrolling region
• Add bottom padding so the last program is not clipped
• Current program card uses the same selection treatment as selected channels

Collapsible Live EPG

• Live TV layouts with an internal player render app-epg-timeline as the EPG content, including playlist-specific live pages and the global favorites/recent live tabs.
• The timeline's own panel bar owns the current-program summary and live date navigation together; there is no separate wrapper component around it.
• Collapsed state is shared across M3U, Xtream, and Stalker with live-epg-panel-state; missing or invalid values restore to expanded.
• The collapsed panel is a slim current-program strip with a trailing progress line and an expand button. Date controls stay out of the collapsed strip.
• Do not render the collapsed strip for external MPV/VLC playback; those layouts keep the full EPG-only panel.
• Keep the EPG content mounted while collapsed so current-program state can continue updating.

Collapsible Live Sidebar

• Live-TV panels fold from the outside in, in three nested levels owned by LiveSidebarState (@iptvnator/portal/shared/util):
  1. expanded — categories rail + channels rail + player.
  2. categories-hidden — channels rail + player. The shell's categories rail (WorkspaceShellContextSidebarComponent, live sections only: Xtream live, Stalker itv/radio) folds; the channels header turns its category title into a dropdown that opens the same rail as a popover, so switching categories stays one click away.
  3. collapsed — player + EPG only ("theater").
• There is deliberately no "channels hidden, categories visible" state: a category click has to bring the channels back anyway. Surfaces without a categories rail (M3U, the unified-collection live tab) treat level 2 like level 1 — and so does the live ROOT (no selected category, Xtream /live "All Items", Stalker's all-items grid): there is no channels rail to host the way back, so the shell folds the categories rail at level 2 only while the portal store has a selected category (hasLiveCategorySelection), and the rail's hide chevron is withheld there too. Level 3 folds it regardless, since the floating restore handle lives in the content area.
• Xtream Live TV's root view (/live with no selected category) follows the same paginated All Items shell as VOD and Series: a widget header with the total channel count, page-size controls, and page navigation above the shared app-grid-list. Use the grid list's logo-oriented live variant so channel logos stay contained in 16:9 thumbnails instead of being cropped like VOD/series posters. Selecting a channel from that root grid starts playback, selects the channel's category, highlights the active category and channel, and scrolls the category rail plus virtual channels list to the selected rows when those rails are visible.
• Affordances, each in the panel it acts on:
  • A chevron_left in the categories rail header (WorkspaceContextPanelComponent, presentation="sidebar", live sections only) → level 2 (hideCategories('portal')).
  • A chevron_right at the start of the channels header (data-test-id="live-show-categories") and the popover footer's "Show categories panel" → level 1, through the shell's LiveCategoriesPopover.showCategoriesPanel(): it sets showCategories('portal') and, at phone widths where the rail is the off-canvas context drawer whose open state the level does not drive, also opens that drawer (WorkspaceShellContextDrawerService.open()).
  • The category dropdown (data-test-id="live-category-dropdown") opens LIVE_CATEGORIES_POPOVER anchored below itself. The token lives in @iptvnator/portal/shared/util; the workspace shell provides it (WorkspaceLiveCategoriesPopoverService, CDK overlay hosting WorkspaceLiveCategoriesPopoverComponent, which stamps the context panel with presentation="popover") and the live layouts reach it through their LivePanelsController (createLivePanelsController() in a field initializer: level flags, the popover bridge and the focus handoff in one shared object, so the layout components carry none of it; without a provider the header keeps its plain title). The stamped panel opts out of the live-TV column keyboard contract (columnHandoff=false: no #portal-categories id, no ArrowRight handoff to #live-channels), since the dialog's focus trap would bounce that handoff back inside and a second id would shadow the folded rail's; the category sort preference is shared through PortalCategorySortStateService, so a sort picked in the popover survives into the restored rail. Backdrop, Escape, the footer, any category selection (categorySelected output), any router NavigationStart and any live-panel level change (Cmd/Ctrl+B reaches the layout through the dialog) close it; focus returns to the trigger. The popover host is a role="dialog" with aria-modal and a CdkTrapFocus host directive that captures focus on open, matching the trigger's aria-haspopup="dialog".
  • The chevron_left in the channels header → level 3 (collapse('portal')).
  • While collapsed, a floating chevron_right mini-fab at the left edge of .content-container, the workspace header toggle and Cmd/Ctrl+B (toggle(surface)) return to the level the user collapsed from, not always to level 1. The shortcut handler ignores events that originate inside <input>, <textarea>, <select>, or content-editable elements via the shared isTypingInInput helper. "Show playing channel" (XtreamLiveChannelNavigationService, StalkerLiveNavigation) uses expand('portal') for the same reason: revealing the row must not unfold a deliberately hidden categories rail.
• Collapsed state is owned by LiveLayoutSidebarStateService (providedIn: 'root') in @iptvnator/portal/shared/util and kept per surface (LiveSidebarSurface): m3u (the M3U player), portal (Xtream and Stalker live layouts plus the shell categories rail) and collection (the unified favorites/recent live tab). Every participant injects the service and reads a derived, stable per-surface signal, never the raw state: the categories rail folds on areCategoriesHiddenFor(surface), the channels rail on isCollapsedFor(surface); actions are toggle, collapse, expand, hideCategories, showCategories and setState, all per surface. Nothing reads localStorage directly. Persistence lives under live-sidebar-state:<surface> and every level is restored as stored; the level toggle() comes back to is session-only. Hiding the list is a per-context choice: it must not follow the user from a portal to an M3U playlist, nor from the desktop rail to the phone bottom drawer of another surface. The pre-split shared key live-sidebar-state is forgotten on service construction and never read — a stored collapsed there hid every channel list in the app behind a 32px chevron and survived restart, "Remove all playlists" and re-import (issue #1458).
• The control never moves. Inside the rail a mat-icon-button with chevron_left hides it; while collapsed a floating chevron_right mini-fab sits at the left edge of .content-container. Because both of those live in the thing they hide, the workspace header additionally renders view_sidebar (headerSidebarToggle, WorkspaceShellHeaderService) on every route that renders its own rail — M3U all/groups, Xtream live, Stalker itv/radio (resolveRouteLiveSidebarSurface). It stays in place in both states, uses aria-pressed (pressed = rail visible) and tints primary only while the rail is hidden, since the hidden state is the exception that deserves the cue. Collection pages are deliberately excluded: only the page knows whether its live tab, and therefore the rail, is on screen, so its own header toggle beside the content switch stays the owner. At the phone breakpoint (≤640px) the header toggle is hidden: the rail is a bottom drawer there with its own toggle and the header has no spare width.
• While the rail is collapsed and nothing is playing, every live host renders app-channel-list-hidden-state (@iptvnator/portal/shared/ui) instead of the "select a channel" empty state: a title that says the list is hidden, a one-line hint naming the shortcut, and a full-size "Show channels list" stroked button wired to the same toggle. The generic app-portal-empty-state grew optional hint, actionLabel, actionIcon inputs and an action output for this; the action keeps full opacity while icon and copy stay muted, because it is the way out of the state.
• A folded rail is 0px wide but still rendered, so it also carries inert (isContextPanelInert on the shell rail, isSidebarCollapsed on the Xtream/Stalker channels rail) to leave the Tab order and the accessibility tree; the shell rail skips inert while it renders as the open phone drawer, whose stylesheet ignores the folded state — and the rail's hide chevron is withheld there for the same reason (canHideCategories). Every level change removes or inerts the very button the user activated, so focus drops to <body>; the side that gains the replacement affordance picks it up after its next render via focusIfFocusLost() (@iptvnator/portal/shared/util): the layouts' LivePanelsController installs handoffFocusOnLiveSidebarChange() over the EFFECTIVE level (on the live root the first category selection folds the rail with no state change) and focuses the floating restore handle at player-only or the show-categories button while the rail is folded, and the shell sidebar, watching the rail's ACTUAL fold state (on the live root the rail stays visible at level 2, so only player-only ↔ visible is a transition there), focuses the control the context panel names (focusTarget(): its hide chevron, or its first header action when the chevron is withheld) and, while none is rendered (categories loading, a failed load), the tabindex="-1" aside itself — only on transitions, and never when another control still owns focus.
• The CSS class .sidebar-collapsed (channels rail) and .context-panel--collapsed (workspace shell categories rail) both override the inline width set by the appResizable directive with width: 0 !important; min-width: 0 !important. The directive's persisted width is preserved so uncollapsing restores the user's previous resized width. Both rails share the same 180 ms width transition so motion stays in lockstep. The dropdown reuses the static heading's type so folding the rail does not move the title; the caret is the only added ink (_portal-sidebar.scss).
• At the phone breakpoint the M3U layout's bottom-drawer rule overrides the desktop collapse to height: 0 instead of width: 0. The floating restore handle stays visible there: the collapse toggle is reachable by touch, so hiding the handle left a phone with no way to bring the list back short of Cmd/Ctrl+B. The phone context drawer ignores the folded state entirely (the user explicitly opened it).

EPG Card

• Radius: 11px (.epg-timeline__block in libs/ui/epg/src/lib/epg-timeline/epg-timeline-track.component.scss)
• Neutral cards use low-contrast surface treatment
• Current card uses selection surface and selection border
• Description should clamp rather than overflow

Sticky Header

• Keep the title readable above content
• Use a solid or near-solid backing surface
• Do not let it overlap or cover player controls

Workspace Xtream Sync Overlay

The import/refresh card pairs a near-opaque --app-widget-bg surface with app-owned text colors in both themes. Blur belongs to the backdrop; card text must not depend on an unprovided Material system surface token. Phase text uses the primary foreground, and explanatory/progress copy uses a readable blend of primary text and the widget surface instead of the decorative muted token. Local and remote badges, and the outlined cancel button, resolve their text, surfaces and interaction colors together. Electron provider E2E coverage holds a cache read open and checks text contrast across live theme changes.

Progress Bars

Channel preview progress and EPG current-program progress should stay visually aligned.

Track

• Height: 6px
• Shape: full pill radius
• Neutral background: medium gray or neutral surface tint
• Include a slight inset edge so the remaining duration is visible

Fill

• Use --app-selection-color
• Add a subtle sheen, not a heavy gradient
• Add a restrained glow, not a neon effect

The progress bar should clearly communicate:

• completed duration
• remaining duration

Avoid making the track too faint, especially in dark theme.

Loading States

Two loading states exist, chosen by whether content is already on screen.

First load: skeleton

Nothing is rendered yet, so the skeleton replaces the whole content area and mirrors the row/card geometry it precedes (see Channel List Item and Cover Grids). The unified Favorites/Recent page gates this on isLoading, set only while its item list is empty.

Pages of independently loading blocks: delayed skeletons

The dashboard renders each rail as soon as its own data arrives, and several rails resolve empty on a normal profile. A per-rail skeleton shown immediately therefore flashed for a few tens of milliseconds and collapsed, pulling every rail below it upwards (a layout shift of about 0.23 on each launch with sources). Rail skeletons are gated per rail (createRailSkeletonGates in libs/workspace/dashboard/feature/src/lib/rails/dashboard-skeleton-grace.ts):

• a skeleton waits out a grace period (DASHBOARD_RAIL_SKELETON_GRACE_MS, 300 ms) counted from when that rail started loading, since Xtream and TMDB rails start after the local ones;
• it never appears above a rail that already shows cards: the placeholder would push visible content down, and back up if the rail resolves empty, while the real rail inserts at most once;
• once shown, it stays until its own rail finishes, so skeletons do not vanish in a cascade when the first real rail arrives.

The top block (the dashboard hero) keeps its immediate skeleton: it reserves the space above everything else, where a late insertion would push the whole page down. Use the same rules for any page that stacks independently loading blocks.

Reload with content on screen: non-destructive indicator

A reload of a list that is already rendered (the collection page's "This playlist ↔ All playlists" scope switch, a favorites reload) must never swap back to the skeleton: that unmounts a playing channel, drops focus from the toggle the user just clicked, and flashes on fast IndexedDB/SQLite answers. Instead keep everything mounted and layer feedback on top:

• an indeterminate mat-progress-bar (2 px track, --app-selection-color fill) absolutely positioned over the header's bottom separator, so its appearance never shifts content;
• aria-busy="true" on the content region for the whole reload;
• the list or grid dims to opacity 0.6 with a 160 ms transition (0ms under prefers-reduced-motion: reduce). The player is never dimmed — the live tab dims only its channel rail.

Grace period. The bar and dimming render only once the reload has run for COLLECTION_RELOAD_INDICATOR_DELAY_MS (180 ms); a reload that settles sooner shows nothing. aria-busy is set immediately, since it does not paint. A superseded reload keeps the earliest deadline and never clears the indicator; only the latest request's completion does. Reference implementation: createCollectionReloadIndicator in libs/portal/shared/data-access/src/lib/collection/collection-reload-indicator.ts. Controls that triggered the reload stay enabled and reflect the requested value at once (scope.set() runs synchronously before the load starts). Because the rows on screen then belong to the PREVIOUS request, actions on them (Clear, drag reorder) must bind to the request that loaded those rows, never to the toggle's current value — "This playlist" applied to still-mounted global rows would delete other playlists' favorites or write foreign URLs into this playlist (loadedRequest on UnifiedCollectionDataService, which the collection page reads through its own mutationRequest).

Navigation Lists

Use the shared nav-list.scss treatment for sidebar and context-panel list items.

Rules

• Keep labels one line with ellipsis
• Keep icon area clear from the selection border and any decorative rail
• Hover is neutral surface, not the selected color
• Selected state uses the shared selection recipe

If the label is too long for the rail, shorten the label key instead of shrinking the component until it becomes inconsistent.

Detail Actions And Episode Surfaces

Secondary detail buttons, episode cards and list rows, and the season view toggle must keep visible edges in both themes before hover. Use app-owned surface colors and neutral borders derived from --app-on-surface; fixed white-alpha fills and borders disappear over the light detail background. Grid cards keep the thumbnail and title on one continuous widget surface. List rows use a subtle neutral fill, with the number on a slightly stronger inset surface. The checked grid/list toggle uses --app-selection-surface and --app-selection-color; hover uses the app's neutral surface treatment. Keep these treatments in the shared season components and detail-action partial so Xtream and Stalker share the same behavior.

The season header's actions wrap onto their own row, starting under the "Seasons and Episodes" heading, before the heading itself would wrap. The detail pane is narrower than the window (context panel, the sticky Back lane), so the header's own width decides, not a viewport breakpoint. A translation wider than the pane itself wraps rather than ellipsizing: unlike a fixed-height panel title, a content heading has room to wrap and should not lose words.

Browser regression coverage measures the composited neutral edges and selected toggle fill, in addition to capturing light/dark grid and list screenshots. Hero action edges use matching pixels from rendered screenshots with the border visible and transparent, retaining the artwork and gradient behind the button; flat ancestor-color compositing is only appropriate outside that layered hero.

Settings Surfaces

Settings use the same system but are flatter than content-heavy views.

Light Theme

• Prefer white or near-white cards
• Use app-owned neutral borders, or a proven Material token with a real fallback such as var(--mat-sys-outline-variant, var(--app-widget-border))
• Keep active sections mostly defined by outline and subtle tint
• Avoid dark translucent backgrounds

Dark Theme

• Denser tinted surfaces are acceptable
• Neutral rows can use low-opacity dark overlays
• Keep strong blue tint reserved for active sections and selected items

Dialogs

• Name. Every dialog has a mat-dialog-title; Material points the container's aria-labelledby at it. A custom-styled title keeps the directive and overrides Material's headline padding and 40px ::before strut, as the programme dialog does.
• Order. Dismiss first, primary last. With end alignment the primary sits on the inline end: the right in LTR, the left in RTL.
• One dismiss. Offer one visible dismiss: a footer "Cancel"/"Close" or a header close icon, not both. Escape and the backdrop still close.
• One row. Action labels are short verbs ("Cancel", "Discard", "Save"), not phrases, so the row fits one line in every locale at the dialog width. Secondary actions tied to one part of the content stay with that content (the programme dialog's archive tools sit under their notice), so the footer is only the dismiss and the primary.
• Phone. At the phone breakpoint an action row may stack: one full-width button per row, in DOM order (dismiss on top, primary at the bottom). The settings unsaved-changes dialog is the reference; settings-unsaved-dialog-layout.e2e.ts in web-e2e measures it in six locales. The programme dialog stacks its archive tools and footer the same way, letting a long label wrap inside its button; the Electron epg-timeline-interaction.e2e.ts measures it in French at 360px.
• Width. A dialog with several openers is opened through one helper that owns its MatDialogConfig, so its width never depends on the entry point. EpgProgrammeDialogService opens the programme dialog at 540px from the timeline, list, guide and channel rows, with a panel class that scopes its surface overrides.

Phone Layout

640px is the phone breakpoint. Use @media (max-width: 640px) rather than inventing a nearby value: several surfaces cooperate at this width, and a component that picks 599px leaves a band where the shell has already stacked but the component has not.

Rails become rows, stacks, or drawers

• The workspace shell rail turns into a horizontal top bar. Everything inside it has to opt into the row direction — a nested list that keeps flex-direction: column stacks its links out of the bar and over the header. The bar scrolls sideways once a portal contributes its sections, and the settings link is position: sticky so it never scrolls out of reach.
• The shell context panel (categories, filters, settings sections) is an off-canvas drawer: hidden by default so the route content owns the full pane, opened from a toggle in the workspace header, closed by selection, backdrop tap, Escape, or any navigation. State lives in WorkspaceShellContextDrawerService (root-provided from @iptvnator/workspace/shell/util — see below for why); the panels call close() after selections that do not navigate — a NavigationEnd listener alone misses Stalker ITV/radio categories, settings sections, sources filters, and collection filters. The drawer positioning is position: fixed on the sidebar host, which also removes it from the shell grid, so the phone workspace-body stays single-pane. The drawer is modal for keyboard and screen-reader users: CdkTrapFocus captures and contains Tab focus while open, the shell marks the rail, header, content, and playback footer inert (a focus trap alone does not stop a screen reader's virtual cursor from activating obscured controls), the panel itself is the initial focus target (tabindex="-1" + cdkFocusInitial, so capture still works when a category list is loading or empty and renders no focusable rows), and the shell restores focus to the header toggle on close — deferred one tick, because the toggle is inside the inert header and focus() on a still-inert element is silently ignored. The service closes the drawer when the viewport leaves the phone breakpoint so the trap and inert state can never hold the in-flow desktop layout. While open, the shell consumes Escape (downstream consumers — the inline player's close handler, the shared controls shortcuts — check defaultPrevented, so one keypress cannot close both the drawer and the obscured player) and suppresses workspace-level shortcuts (Ctrl/Cmd+F global search, Ctrl/Cmd+K command palette, Ctrl/Cmd+R global recent, the ? shortcuts dialog — dialogs must not stack a second focus trap on the modal drawer, and navigation must not act behind it), and document-level shortcuts owned by routed content (shared controls, Embedded MPV legacy dock, radio audio player, the live layouts' Ctrl/Cmd+B sidebar toggle, the M3U player's digit-key channel switching and sidebar toggle) opt out on their own by checking for an inert ancestor, since inert does not silence document-level listeners. Any NEW document-level key listener on routed content must apply the same closest('[inert]') guard. The service is root-provided from @iptvnator/workspace/shell/util so consumers outside the shell's element injector (AppComponent's Ctrl/Cmd+R handler) can observe it without pulling the lazy shell chunk into the eager bundle. The shell also registers the open drawer with EmbeddedMpvOverlayVisibilityService.acquireExternalModalSurface(): the native-view video surface is composited outside DOM stacking and would paint straight over the drawer regardless of z-index. The drawer carries its own phone-only close button: touch screen-reader users have no hardware Escape and cannot reach the inert header toggle or the aria-hidden backdrop, so the trapped surface itself must offer dismissal even when its list is loading or empty. The toggle's label is variant-aware — categories, filters, or settings sections — because a fixed label would misdescribe two of the three.
• Other side rails stack above the content instead of beside it: the live-layout channel sidebar and the M3U channel drawer.

Resizable rails need !important

ResizableDirective writes the persisted desktop width as an inline style, so a phone rule must be width: 100% !important to win. Hide .resize-handle in the same rule — dragging is meaningless at full width. Since there is no global border-box reset, a full-width rail with its own padding also needs box-sizing: border-box or it overflows the viewport.

State the content's floor, not the list's ceiling

On routes that stack two lists above the player (live TV shows the categories panel and the channel list), capping both lists still leaves the video a sliver. Give the player container a min-height instead and let the lists shrink into what is left.

What to drop

Prefer removing a control over shrinking everything around it:

• Keyboard-only affordances — the ⌘K badge, the shortcuts button.
• Counts and subtitles that a neighbouring control already states.

Never drop the only way back to a hidden surface. A collapse toggle that is reachable by touch needs its restore affordance to be reachable too.

Theme Guidance

Light Theme

• Flat beats glossy
• White and app-owned widget/content surface layers should separate content
• Selection should read as a blue outline plus soft tint, not a solid slab

Dark Theme

• Slight translucency is acceptable
• Background layers can be deeper and more cinematic
• Keep contrast readable without going pure white everywhere

Reuse Strategy

Before creating new markup or CSS:

1. Check whether app-channel-list-item can be reused.
2. Check whether app-epg-timeline already provides the correct structure.
3. Check whether nav-list.scss already solves the list-selection problem.
4. Inspect the public APIs of @iptvnator/ui/components, @iptvnator/ui/epg, @iptvnator/ui/playback, @iptvnator/ui/shared-portals, @iptvnator/portal/shared/ui, and @iptvnator/playlist/shared/ui.
5. Put provider-neutral collection loading, persistence, and cross-provider orchestration in @iptvnator/portal/shared/data-access, not a UI library or the shared util library.
6. Extend tokens first, duplicate styles last.

Implementation Workflow

When updating IPTVnator UI:

1. Inspect the current shared component first.
2. Reuse the shared structure where possible.
3. Keep selection, progress, and spacing in sync across Xtream, Stalker, and shared portal views.
4. Verify in both light and dark themes.
5. Run the focused component/unit target and the closest Playwright workflow.
6. Use the running Electron app through CDP only for Electron-only gaps or additional layout inspection; it does not replace available E2E coverage.

Anti-Patterns

Avoid these:

• introducing a new selected-state color unrelated to the theme tokens
• introducing independent dark-only EPG surface palettes
• duplicating channel row markup in portal-specific views
• showing placeholder logos behind real logos
• making entire panes scroll when only the list should scroll
• using dark translucent fills unchanged in light theme
• solving cramped sidebars with smaller fonts instead of shorter labels

Definition Of Done For UI Changes

A visual change is not done until:

1. Shared component reuse was considered first.
2. Light theme and dark theme both look intentional.
3. Selection and progress states match existing IPTVnator patterns.
4. Scroll behavior is correct.
5. The result was checked in the running app for layout-sensitive work.

Network source indicators (Electron)

The switcher and source rows use SourceHealthIndicatorComponent: green means available, orange expired, red disabled/access refused, and neutral means checking or unverified. Accessible tooltip text distinguishes refusal from a confirmed disabled account and includes the check time. M3U indicators describe the source URL only. Check again is a separate action, not a playlist refresh.

Inactive-source cleanup dialog

Electron Sources offers a library-wide cleanup action even when page filters hide all rows. The confirmation dialog groups confirmed inactive accounts, uncertain candidates, skipped sources and deletion outcomes. It preserves checkbox choices on recheck, labels destructive consequences, and announces progress. During deletion Escape/backdrop closing is disabled; Stop after current source finishes the current operation. Healthy sources appear only in the summary. Source titles wrap; credential-bearing URLs are not displayed.