Background:

Initially we introduced this element to allow the MultiDevice settings section to dynamically hide itself when there were no eligible hosts. Since then, the specs have changed so that the section no longer needs to hide itself in that case. So now the only reasons to hide the section are the cases handled by the general settings framework (flag off, guest session) or when the Chromebook is not enrolled in CryptAuth. Because we will be enrolling Chromebooks automatically when their flag is on, the only case that's not covered by the general settings framework is when a user opens the setting page between the time they go through the Setup Flow and when their Chromebook gets its response from CryptAuth.

The CryptAuth response is expected to take on the order of one second or less so the remaining problem case is when the user is offline. We could add a string to clarify this case or we could simply treat it the same as the 'no eligible devices' case since it's likely to be an infrequent case anyway.


Immediate Impetus:

Settings has recently pushed back against this design because no other settings page has that pattern (dynamically appearing/hiding) and it is at odds with some of their existing patterns, e.g. they use an immutable registry of subpage routes.

Also, a few bugs have popped up, e.g. 883893, 876905, that are likely to go away if we don't rely on the additional layer of the settings-multidevice-page-container handling the page's visibility dynamically.


Plan:

Get rid of the intermediate settings-multidevice-page-container layer altogether.