drawer_rail 0.4.0

A collapsible, themeable side navigation drawer with a full-width panel and a narrow icon rail: search, sections, badges, expandable groups and flyouts.

Changelog

0.4.0

Hover: opening and closing

• Add DrawerRailTheme.hoverAdaptive(), a one-line preset that makes the drawer pointer-driven: rail and groups switch to hover, railAutoCollapse turns on, and linkTrigger deliberately stays on click. Pass base: to layer it over your own styling.
• Add DrawerRailTheme.railAutoCollapse (default false) and hoverAutoCollapseDelay (default 450ms). With railTrigger: hover, leaving the drawer now also closes one the user left expanded, making hover symmetric. Off by default because it takes away a panel someone pinned open.
• Add DrawerRailController.hoverHidden and setHoverHidden, the mirror of hoverPeeking. Like a peek, an auto-collapse never writes collapsed, so the state you persist still survives a passing mouse.
• Fix: a group opened by hover now closes when the panel itself closes, instead of still sitting open the next time the drawer is revealed.
• Fix: an explicit collapse/expand now also cancels an auto-hide in flight, not just a peek.

Cursors

• Add DrawerRailTheme.clickableCursor (default SystemMouseCursors.click) and inertCursor (default SystemMouseCursors.basic), plus matching parameters on AnimatedPressCard. Every clickable surface now states its cursor rather than inheriting one, and the drawer's own chrome states the arrow — so the pointer reliably reverts when it leaves an item.

Motion

• Add groupAnimationCurve, hoverAnimationDuration and hoverAnimationCurve.
• Fix: the group unfold used a linear height tween, which read as mechanical next to the eased width animation. It and the chevron rotation now follow groupAnimationCurve.
• Fix: the item hover shadow/tint appeared and vanished in a single frame. It now fades over hoverAnimationDuration.
• Fix: hovering a selected item replaced its pill color with the drawer surface. An already-opaque background is now kept as the shadow's backing surface, so the pill keeps its color and just lifts.
• Items now spring back from a press with a slight overshoot instead of easing flatly back to size.
• Honour MediaQuery.disableAnimations: every animation duration collapses to zero when the platform asks for reduced motion. Hover delays are kept — they gate an interaction, not a motion effect. DrawerRailTheme.resolve takes a new optional reduceMotion flag.

Other

• Add DrawerRailTheme.copyWith.
• The hover-shadow regression helper moved back to matching AnimatedContainer, because the card genuinely renders one now. The 0.3.0 note below was correct at the time and is simply no longer true.
• Rewrite the README: every theme field now documents what it turns on and what visibly moves, and the example app got live switches for Open on hover and Close on exit.

0.3.0

• Add DrawerActivationMode (click / hover) and three theme fields that choose how each interaction is triggered on web and desktop: DrawerRailTheme.railTrigger (pointer peeks the collapsed rail open), groupTrigger (pointer opens groups inline and as rail flyouts) and linkTrigger (pointer activates a link after a dwell). All default to click, so existing behavior is unchanged.
• Add hoverOpenDelay, hoverCloseDelay and hoverSelectDelay to tune the hover timings. The close delay is what lets the pointer travel from a rail button to its flyout without the menu snapping shut.
• Add DrawerRailController.hoverPeeking, railCollapsed and setGroupExpanded. A hover peek widens the rail without changing collapsed, so the state you persist survives a passing mouse; read railCollapsed for the width actually on screen.
• Hover never replaces tap: every item stays clickable in every mode, so touch platforms — where hover events never fire — are unaffected.
• Fix two hover regression tests that were passing vacuously: the helper looked for an AnimatedContainer under AnimatedPressCard, which renders a plain Container, so it never inspected anything.

0.2.1

• Fix visual bug where hover effect was applied as an overlay affecting foreground legibility. Hover now strictly alters the background color using InkWell, keeping text and icons at 100% opacity.

0.2.0

• Add DrawerRailTheme.hoverEffect (DrawerHoverEffect.shadow / .highlight / .none) so the item hover feedback can be switched or turned off, plus hoverHighlightColor for the highlight variant.
• Fix the murky/cloudy look of the hover shadow: in shadow mode an opaque surface is now painted behind the card, so the shadow reads as a lift instead of a colored haze bleeding through transparent items.

0.1.0

Initial release.

• DrawerRail: collapsible side navigation drawer with an expanded panel and a narrow icon rail.
• Built-in diacritic-insensitive search, uppercase section headers, selected pill, text/count badges, inline-expandable groups and collapsed flyout menus.
• DrawerRailController (ChangeNotifier) for collapse, selection and group state — no external state-management dependency.
• DrawerRailLabels for localizing the built-in chrome.
• Customizable header and footer slots via builders.
• Fully customizable DrawerRailTheme, falling back to the ambient ColorScheme:
  • Sizing/spacing: expandedWidth, railWidth, iconSize, railIconSize, railItemHeight, borderRadius, itemBorderRadius, contentPadding, itemPadding, groupChildIndent.
  • Text styles: labelTextStyle, selectedLabelTextStyle, sectionTextStyle, badgeTextStyle, plus sectionUppercase.
  • Chrome icons: collapseIcon, expandIcon, searchIcon, clearSearchIcon, groupTrailingIcon.
  • Motion: animationDuration, animationCurve, groupAnimationDuration, pressedScale.
  • Layout: DrawerRailPosition (left / right).
• DrawerRail.searchDecoration to fully override the search field, and DrawerRail.showFooterDivider.