Chromatic configuration messaging improvements

[ghengeveld]

From AP-4272

How is the user affected? And what is the expected behavior?

After doing some additional QA based on AP-4201 I noticed a couple of items that require some polish to unblock users and avoid misconceptions:

1. When a user extends the Visual tests addon configuration as mentioned in the linked ticket, Storybook will break the build and stop it immediately as seen below.

Since the addon is now tied to Storybook, the message does not provide clarity nor point at a place where a user should look for information on what's happening, or how to solve this issue. We can mitigate this by:

• Add a link to the appropriate section in the Visual tests page
• On the documentation front, change from details element into a proper heading to make it more discoverable (more even as the generated link does not work).

2. For the UI aspect, the messaging also needs to be updated as the instructions that are available to the user don't provide clarity and are misleading him/her on the steps needed and leaves the user in an inconsistent state where he/she doesn't know what to do in this situation as captured below

Chromatic.config.UI.issue.mp4

I was able to solve this via restarting Storybook, but we can not guarantee that our users will have the same thinking process and may start jumping into the support channels (e.g., Intercom, Storybook's discussions, or the issue tracker) and start asking questions that could have been avoided.

3. The CLI is too eager on showing the error message regarding the configuration, which can cause yet more misconceptions from the user's part. Specifically after the user finishes the auth process and jumps into the project selection, as there's no configuration file, or project connected to the addon, it throws the error message and leaves the CLI in the following state

Chromatic.CLI.issue.mp4

For this specific item, if we're unable to address it in a good way, we can at least mitigate it with type of message that avoids this scenario.

cc @winkerVSbecks

[jonniebigodes]

Comment from mentioned ticket

I just tested a custom file location for the config and it worked successfully from 8.x. Also, if I cannot find the file, this error message throws and the SB CLI exits early. We can improve this message further, if you have suggestions. Yet, this seems to be resolved otherwise.

via @thafryer