Vote for Feature: Tile Pops Up Multiple Tiles Overlaid on Dashboard

Feature Requests
1

Feature Request: tapping a single tile pops up a set of multiple tiles (or another dashboard) overlaid on the existing dashboard, similar to the way tiles are shown for the HSM selector tile (below). The existing dashboard therefore shows through, with its background blurred, so that the user has the seamless experience of remaining on the same dashboard page. Moreover, a simple tap of the close button returns the user to the existing dashboard.

Example use case 1: tapping a single Lights tile pops up a set of individual light switch tiles (or a light switch dashboard) overlaid onto the existing dashboard. This can be used for example to have a single Kitchen Lights tile pop up individual tiles for all of the lights in the Kitchen.

Example use case 2: tapping an album art tile pops up additional music control tiles, like volume control, track control, device grouping, etc.

Example use case 3: Customizable mode selector. Tapping a single Mode tile pops up multiple mode control tiles, just like the picture below for the HSM selector tile. But, with this feature request, the individual tiles that pop up will be customizable in terms of icons, naming, etc.

Associated feature request (also posted as separate feature): dashboard tile’s state (style and icon) able to follow the state of a variable. So the Lights tile can follow the state of an “anyLightOn” variable.

Note: creating a dashboard tile to open up another dashboard (with transparent background) in a modal doesn’t currently do the same thing because the dashboard won’t show the existing dashboard’s background behind it.

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2 Likes
3

That’s a neat concept. So the idea would be you could add a ‘multi device popup’ tile to your dashboard, then configure that tile with a selection of devices that you’d like to see and when you tapped on it you would see something like your screenshot above, but with the selected devices?

For simplicity’s sake in configuration, is the expectation that the devices would just show their default ‘hero’ capability/attribute? Otherwise I could see the configuration getting overly complex within a single ‘multi device popup’ tile… the challenge is that there’s lots of devices with an overloaded set of capabilities where the default might not actually be what you want. :thinking:

At that point I wonder if it would make sense to just be able to expose another dashboard as a modal with a more seamless experience. For example, taking the ‘Dashboard’ tile and adding an option to ‘Open in Modal’ and if that is selected, then display an additional option to ‘Make Background Transparent’ or something like that.

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Yup. If you can accomplish the same effect by opening a dashboard in a modal with a transparent background, i think that would definitely be the best and easiest option. Because then neither you nor the user has to figure out a new user interface for configuring the multi-device popup tile. I think a “Make Background Transparent” option would work if it’s accompanied by the existing Advanced options for controlling blurring, etc. The only thing here would be that I think the “modal” in this case would need to be the same size as the underlying dashboard, rather than being popped up in a smaller window. That way the location of tiles is consistent with what you expect when you create the dashboard to be overlaid.

One other thing: I would want a “Doors tile” to show a closed door icon if all doors are closed and to show an open door icon if at least one door is open. Then, clicking on the Doors tile would pop up my Doors dashboard with a transparent background. As it stands now, I think the only way to do that is to use a Variables Tile whose state follows an “anyDoorOpen” variable set using Rule Machine and whose action is set to open the URL of the Doors dashboard. So, to have the functionality in the above example, the dashboard tile would need to be enhanced to have its state follow a variable too. Or, the Variables tile would need to be enhanced to open a dashboard’s URL with a transparent background - but not sure how that would work since the openURL functionality is generic, not just for dashboards.

Thanks for showing interest in this! I really like this idea because it effectively expands the functionality of a single dashboard and gives lots of controls at a user’s fingertips, without the user feeling like they are having to navigate deep into a page structure.

2 Likes
5

I went ahead and renamed the topic title and moved it into the Feature Requests category. Feel free to rename the topic if you don’t feel like my adjustment describes it well enough (and be sure to scroll up and cast a vote).

Edit: I see you’ve gotten creative with your renaming of the topic. :laughing: :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
6

How many votes does a feature need to make the cut? :slight_smile: The better the idea, the fewer the votes needed? So, like 2 votes for this one? Jk

7

Oops, just suggested basically the same thing without finding this one

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Thinking about this some more, implementing this with a dashboard overlay would probably require the ability to turn off the animation on dashboard load. So that the dashboard icons don’t “fly in” from the top left corner, but instead pop up like the icons do for the HSM selector.

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@josh Curious: do you have a sense of how hard this would be technically to implement? Is it as simple as styling a modal window’s opacity or background with css, and making the modal window a little bigger? Or is that a gross oversimplification? Just trying to get a sense of how long I should be holding my breath - if it’s easy to implement it would give me hope :slight_smile:

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I would want to do it properly and have it rendered within the app rather than as an iframe within a modal.

Bumping the topic probably didn’t hurt though as it looks like this topic has gained a few votes recently. :wink:

1 Like
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I keep coming up with more and more use cases for this. It also occurs to me that this would probably need to be a premium user feature given your business model of 1 free dashboard for a free account. So it would be another feature to entice users into a premium account. Sounds good, right? :slight_smile:

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12

My latest use case for this feature:

Tapping on one of my kid’s avatars will bring up a set of avatar customization options, for them to quickly customize their avatar for the day. Customization options are awarded or earned, e.g., for good grades. They can earn baseball caps, cool sunglasses, sports jerseys, etc. I think this would be much more convenient than having to load an entire dashboard for a quick avatar adjustment.

As an example with my avatar below, tapping it would allow me to customize my baseball hat (just a prototype - I would need to redo my picture so it looks better)

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Continuing the conversation as a shameless bump.

I voted for this one. I am using a number of dashboards that I pop-up in modal windows to handle “quick” changes.

For example:

  • Clicking on the tile displaying the number of people home pops up a window with a tile for each person so you can see who is home.

  • I have a tile with the number of days until christmas - when you click on it you get all of the options for playing Christmas playlists, turning on lights, etc.

etc.

Two observations

Opening a dashboard in modal works fine on the PC - but my main dashboards are all running Android and this is a little too slow. Takes up to 10 seconds to load the windows, presumably because it has to authenticate the dashboard, etc. I am running Fully Kiosk on top of Android on Intel NUCs so I am not lacking power.

Second, I would be interested in the blur option, as well as the option to select a new background for the pop-up.

I had originally gone down the route of creating dashboards with a static menu on the side - HVAC, Lights, etc. But I am now designing more without the menu and having all navigation start on the main page and then return to it. Seems to flow much better, especially as no one in my house knows what HVAC means!

2 Likes
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I am looking into this post - How To: Fast Switch Between Dashboards with Fully Kiosk Browser

I haven’t figured out everything in the post yet but would this allow me to load “pop-up” screens in Fully Kiosk more quickly? Thanks.

15

bump…
I still like this idea. Instead of having all my wall or desk tablets with the same primary dash options, my design is to have a different starting dash depending on where device is. if I am at a public dash, I don’t need direct access to master bed controls for example. Upstairs has different dash than downstairs. This makes this ‘modal’ option or the ability to group tiles and lock their layout (mini dash w/i a dash like a floorplan where sensors are) useful for my set up of different dashes, vs all dashes having a list of the other dashes to go to.

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Nice to know, @simon and @mark_price , that I’m not the only one that’s really, really wanting this feature! SharpTools seems hard at work on improvements lately, with Super Tiles and the Home Assistant connection, so hopefully this will make it to the top of the list soon :slight_smile:

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17

I realized I never really answered this question since we originally went down the path of exposing a dashboard. To keep configuration simpler, one option would be to have a “Pop-Up Tile” resource just like there’s now a “Super Tile” resource. Users would configure each “Pop-Up Tile” resource on an individual basis. Then, when editing a dashboard, you could add a “Pop-Up Container” within which you could then add any “Pop-Up Tile” resources. Configuration of an individual “Pop-Up Tile” resource would then be simple, as it would be similar to editing a tile already. Perhaps you would also be able to add a “Custom Tile” or at least a “Super Tile” into a “Pop-Up Container”. Just some thoughts… if the ultimate functionality is there, I’m wide open on how to do it! :slight_smile:

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18

With the Custom Icons feature request being implemented, that means this feature request could in fact function as a customizable mode selector, where a user can custom define button tiles for whatever modes are on his or her smart home hub and have custom icons that are representative of the modes. So, no more “house” icon for Vacation Mode…instead, Vacation Mode can have a beach icon or whatever.

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I really love this request as i have loads of usecases for it. But imho it will cause some conflicts for the programming if you just popup another dashboard in the modal. especially if you want to avoid iframes. So maybe a first shot could be to use the SuperTiles for this. So just one superTile will be shown and in this superTile you are very flexible to setup what you want. But it doesn’t matter how this will be implemented, essential is that it will be implemented =)

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Interesting. So you’re saying to pop up a super tile when a base tile is tapped? I guess that would be better than nothing… but not as flexible as popping up a set of tiles that are individually configurable.

21

As many votes as custom icons and style/state mapping now. That’s gotta be good news for the next round of feature request implementation :wink:

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