Testing new Dashboard capability
Groups:
Drupal Commons provides a Dashboard page to help focus your attention on content that is relevant to you from across the site. This is a form of Personalization that Commons provides.
In order to increase the personalization available, we're intending to add the Homebox module for use on the Dashboard page. The Homebox module is stable; but isn't yet part of the Drupal Commons distribution.
So we're adding it to this site (commons.acquia.com) as a beta test of the module before we add it to the distribution. You'll note the following capabilities are available to you, the user:
- Drag/drop boxes (blocks) on the Dashboard page to your own desired location.
- Set the standard view of a block to be expanded (normal), or collapsed (down to the title-bar only).
- Toggle a block to take up the entire width of the page (and back).
- Select which blocks you want to have displayed, or hidden. (Click the Toggle Items button.)
- Save your layout. This is personalized to your account.
Please comment on what you think of this capability by adding comments below.
Poll
Would you migrate your Commons site to Drupal 7
Yes: definitely it is important
76%
Maybe: would evaluate
20%
No: it is not very imporant
4%
Total votes: 292
Latest discussions
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24 Nov 2011 - 04:55 by francoisl
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18 Sep 2011 - 12:53 by epaul
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Latest discussion comments
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Comments
Awesome
This is really a very usefull module that improve and enhance the collaborative work and use with Drupal_Commons. Great.
Note: by a new page refresh the list of block appears and after a while disappear. I guess this is as design?
I think that's a bug really:
I think that's a bug really: the content from the 'toggle items' pop-up appears for about a second and then disappears.
Not exactly a bug.. That's
Not exactly a bug..
That's because the content is rendered before (all) of the JS files can be loaded. Once they're loaded, the JS converts that DIV into a hidden modal. CSS should be used to hide that, then the JS should take over from there. The current dev branch of Homebox is a bit unorganized at the moment, due to all of the work that was done to get it ready for the new Drupal.org. The issue queue for that module is filling up quickly and I'm trying to carve some time out to take care of everything and get it ready for another solid release.
It is an..
.. implementation artifact. I talked to Mike about it yesterday, and basically all the boxes on the page load, then JS hides the toggles at the top. This permits the selection of shown boxes to be done without a page load. To eliminate this, Mike would have to figure out a different JS technique to do the block selection. He didn't say it's the highest thing on his priority list; but I think this will move up the list soon, IMHO. :-)
Just a Hint and a guess
I'm honest I did not take a look into the module yet but I may guess that for whatsoever reason the developer did not build an extra homebox.admin.inc function as to simplify setting with JS.
Simplify setting?
Simplify setting?
I mean
an User interface form to select boxes/blocks for showing in the Dashboard/Homebox page, separated from the live view.
Thumbs up!
Thumbs up!
An other option discuss there
http://commons.acquia.com/discussion/homebox-feedback-about-community-or...
Feedback of client
Too many boxes can be overwellming and cause serious slow down (mainly on browser).
Yes the slow down is the most
Yes the slow down is the most important part. This obviously depends on what the blocks contain. Loaded up 10 or so blocks generated by views can be extremely costly.
Performance
Theire is a caching option for homebox but it's global not per block and I have not noticed performance improvement on login trafic. Did you ?
Do you know what sort of setting Dropal.org use.
Is there any place where the settings use for Drupal.org are documented ?
My concern as Drupal shop
My main concern is where should put the limit on user customisation.
If the dashboard is a sort of netwibes how to draw the line ?
It may look buggy.
Homebox and OG is difficult to make it intuitive :
You can use homebox with OG but their is not one homebox for each OG but one OG/homebox setting for a user accros all OG
http://drupal.org/node/929644
Personal profile is even more "strange" in a end user perspective :
If A make a change one his/her own profil (A)
But also on other users' (B,C,D...) profil when user A browse them
It doesn't affect how user B see is own profil
But the customisation of user B will apply to user A profil when it's browse by user B)
When you are a Drupal shop what you need to avoid is that your client say "it's broken" when it works as it's technically intended but conter intuitive from a non technical user's perspective.
Well, that's a pretty scattered list, JB...
Here's some comments:
No offence to be taken :)
I was just giving some feedback about difficulties you may enconter in deploying homebox as it is.
I hope it's usefull to developers on product manger involved in Commons.
Nice! How about other pages?
Nice!
How about other pages?
We haven't considered switching the entire set of pages
.. to Homebox. You could think about it yourself, but we haven't (yet) been thinking about using Homebox as a generalized page layout solution for all pages. (Why? I don't know; Mike S. might be able to say more.)
Nothing would stop you, but
Nothing would stop you, but there are certain plenty (most) cases where you don't want to give users free control to move everything around. That might even be annoying for the user, being given nothing but pages loaded with movable blocks all over the place.
Homebox's behaviors is easier to understand as dashboard
As the homebox is related to each user : OG group homebox (you can find set it up in Commons setting) would be share accros all OG groups. Idem for profil page. It has it's Drupal logic but it would look like buggy to end user. It's my take on it but would be happy to hear other feedbacks.
Yes, if you were to use
Yes, if you were to use homebox_og, the settings that the user chooses for 1 group would persist across all. The og integration was done very quickly just as proof of concept. There is plenty more that can/should be done.
It could be a great addition to empower groups' managers
Giving to each group manager the possibility to create easily new homepage would be very interesting.
You would need to change quite a lot of logic of homebox.
Make a set of block available for group manager (not the same than the webmaster who should be able to choose all the block available on the site), make the default homebox layout available for each of the group.
Alternatives Panel and Boxes :
Panel (like in GDO) see Dojo http://blip.tv/play/AYKIsCwC but, panel could be over complex for non drupalist person.
Boxes of OpenAtrium http://player.vimeo.com/video/9182774 Much more user friendly for a non technical person.
Spaces
Isn't this what Spaces OG is for?
This is a great addition to
This is a great addition to the Dashboard, and it's again the page I visit the most.
In our first implementation
In our first implementation our client choose to use the homebox homepage as connexion page.
Is there a way to analyse how
Is there a way to analyse how users are changing the way they display their homebox to see what is the most usefull ressource on commons.
What a totally interesting idea!
And no, I don't think there is a ready-made feature for this in Homebox. BUT, this sounds like something we should either build into the Homebox module - or maybe we can script a report on it in the Quant module. I'll ask Mike.
That's not a built-in
That's not a built-in feature. It could be extracted from the database. I'm not sure what type of information you would want to pull from it. It also might be a little invasive to dig into users personal settings. Just a thought..
It could be interesting to
It could be interesting to see what the 6 most used boxes are for instance, to use them as sane defaults for the distribution. And you can query this without adding user information, so it's not invasive at all.
It could be an interesting
It could be an interesting metrics along other provided by Quant
n/m
n/m