Adding Surfaces

Browse the marketplace

Open traces.com/surfaces to see every public surface. Surfaces built by the Traces team are listed under Featured; everything else appears below.

Each card links to the surface's page and has an Add surface button. You can browse without signing in; adding a surface asks you to sign in first and then returns you to the page.

Try a surface before adding it

Open a surface's page at /surfaces/<key> to see:

• Its description, Creator, Created date, and current Version
• A live preview rendered against a built-in sample trace, so you can see it working without picking a trace
• Preview, which opens the surface on one of your recent traces, grouped by namespace. Signed-out visitors can pick from recent public traces instead
• Add surface, and a button to copy a link to the page

Add a surface to your tabs

Click Add surface on a marketplace card or a surface's page. An added surface opens as a tab every time you view a trace, so you don't have to pick it again. Click Remove in the same place to take it off.

Added surfaces belong to your account, not to a trace: they follow you to every trace you open.

Surfaces on the trace page

On a trace page, surface tabs sit next to Highlights and Full Trace:

• Your added surfaces open first, in the order you added them.
• Use the surface picker at the end of the tab bar to open any other surface on this trace. Surfaces from the Traces team are listed first, and Create takes you to the create page. A surface opened this way is a preview: it appears after a divider, and it isn't kept for other traces.
• Hover a surface tab and open its menu for:
  • Add to your tabs, to keep a previewed surface open on every trace
  • Manage, which goes to the surface's page. Only shown to people who can manage the surface
  • Remove, to close a preview or remove an added surface from your tabs

The open surface is reflected in the URL as ?surface=<key>, so you can share a link to a trace with a specific surface open.