Dashboard and widgets feedback

[WildEnte]

With the snapshot released Oct. 2nd 2024 the new dashboard feature was introduced, and in the snapshot released a week later it was moved from the experiments section and generally enabled.

There's a thread on making beautiful custom widgets where @luetage has already posted code for a weather widget, the NASA Astronomy picture of the day, a binary clock, ... at the time of writing this.

So, time for some feedback and thoughts!

• Widget store: Custom widgets are possible require a bit of tinkering even if you just use one of the above mentioned custom ones here. I think Widgets are more like themes than custom UI mods, so a store would make widgets much more accessible and invite people to play.

• Vertical space - don't use too many widgets: on my laptop, I have a resolution of 1920x1080. The Win11 taskbar takes space at the bottom and with Vivaldi's standard setup (tabs on top, navigation bar on internal pages, status bar active) I'm left with a mere 870 pixels vertically. This allows 3 widgets of regular size or 1 regular plus 1 tall widget to be placed above each other. This is also the configuration shown in the release blog post. I started off with too many things and the dashboard just got cluttered and lost its appeal. Learning: reduce to the max. Go for 4 really useful widgets instead of trying to cram 10 mediocre ones in

• Home Assistant: now this is quite cool. Home Assistant's own dashboard is and will undoubtedly be more powerful than Vivaldi's BUT I can show HA's dashboard as a widget in Vivaldi's dashboard (gotcha!). So now I can show it in parallel to my Speed Dials and Emails and what-have-you. Also, since HA allows me to have a neat spotify widget and Vivaldi doesn't, I get a spotify widget for free :-).
  

• Mail Widget: I have two things here:
  VB-109796: I have filed this request to allow selecting any mail filter that is available in the mail panel. I would love to see Unread, but maybe someone wants to keep an eye on one specific subfilter.
  VB-109799: I understand that the widget is supposed to be just a simple 'this is new', but 80% of my emails are just FYI, so I'd be totally ok just working through them in the widget rather than going to the full blown mail client or even opening the email in a tab. --> I would like to see a preview of the email body / calendar entry details, for emails ideally with the ability to mark as read / label / archive / delete and maybe even quick reply. I imagine this would look like the editor for calendar events that the calendar widget already has.

• Add a themes widget: Filed as VB-110565 - Theming is a central feature of Vivaldi. For some, it's super nice to change themes regularly, but you have to go to the settings to play around with themes. A widget could promote this feature better. A widget could also invite people to check out new themes by showing featured ones.
  

So with all that said, here's my current setup with my dashboard:

[ryofurue]

I like the Dashboard. Finally, it's a useful Start Page. The Wiktionary widget is exactly what I've been looking for.

Because I don't use bookmarks, the Speed Dial hasn't been useful to me at all. I open a Start Page only to start a new search, as a starting point of a new tab stack. The Dashboard is much more useful to me than the Speed Dial.

Here are some feature requests:

Drag & Drop a widget to the Tab Bar to open it as a tab (without removing the widget).

As a philologist, I love Wiktionary and the Wiktionary widget is exactly what I've been looking for. But a widget is too small and also I sometimes want to start a tab stack from there.

A simple analogue clock. This could be part of the calendar widget.

Weather. This could also be part of another widget.

Because the desktop of macOS can show widgets, the latter two (clock and weather) aren't strictly necessary, but those desktop widgets are almost always covered by apps . . .

[WildEnte]

@ryofurue thanks for your reply and input! It's interesting to see how people's needs are different, which just leads to the same feature being used in totally different ways.

In case you haven't seen it yet, in the custom modifications thread I mentioned above there are the two widgets posted that you are looking for (using the webpage widget):

Analog Clock widget: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/101613/custom-dashboard-widgets/25?_=1729572021093

Weather widget: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/101613/custom-dashboard-widgets?_=1729572521162

[dmg]

Widgets:

• Webpage Widgets - Add the navbar as in the panel would be great,
  (it could drop into view on hover) and add the ability to choose mobile or desktop
  

• Resize widgets horizontally. Be able to drag over to fill 1,2 or 3 columns wide and drag, resize vertically in degrees as well.

• Webpage widgets - The ability to expand/send or drag widgets to side panel and vice versa.

• Webpage widgets - The ability to maximise to a tab. ( I can a imagine an awesome special effect for that,)

DASHBOARD

• Workspace Support - Different dashboard per window or workspace.
  *For example a work based workspace could have currency converters and planners as webpage widgets or a home one could have kids school homework apps embedded as webpage widgets.

More Backgrounds - a connection to Unsplash

[deestarod]

@dmg I agree, that there needs to be a way you can easily expand the webpage widget out into a full window.

I'm not usually a fan of dashboards but I do like this one. I can see myself using it quite a lot.

Not being able to easily expand the webpage into a full browser window is one limitation that is going to frustrate me though.

[Durtro]

My suggestion for the feature is that the Dashboard should be a "page" in its own right. Basically mimic the same behavior as notes, history and bookmarks that have their own url (vivaldi:notes, vivaldi:history and vivaldi:bookmarks) and their own icon/favicon.

[mib2berlin]

@Durtro
Hi, then you can tile it with the speed dial page, for example.
I cant use it on the dashboard because it doesn't support custom thumbnails for folders.

Cheers, mib

[maximvasiljev]

I noticed that links in website widgets work somehow strange.

If link contains attribute target="_blank" nothing happens when I click(LMC) on it, expected behavior – opening in new tab.

When I click with middle button or ⌘ + click – that links open in new tab as expected.

Probably it's bug.

[teela]

I need the notes widget to be resizable in height.

[Antzus]

@WildEnte How on earth do you get the Speed Dial widget there?

[derDay]

@Antzus
I don't know it exactly, but speedial is a special folder within the bookmarks. and you have a bookmark widget, where you can choose a specific bookmarks folder. so add the the speeddial folder at the bookmarks widget

[WildEnte]

@Antzus I just pointed the bookmarks widget to my speed dial bookmarks folder

[Antzus]

Thanks you both! I don't really use bookmarks, so never thought to look there.

Dashboard gives me the impression it still needs a lot of refinement, but now I have my Speed Dial links I'm willing to test it out a bit.

[luteva]

Just discovered the dashboard. This is really cool!
What's missing is the possibility to show only dedicated mails. For now i can only choose an account (or all accounts).
It would be really great to be able to only show unread mails or mails by a given filter or label! Or maybe this is possible already, but idk how this can be achieved?
Maybe this is planned already?
Thanks again for the dashboard feature, really cool!

[WildEnte]

@luteva said in Dashboard and widgets feedback:

It would be really great to be able to only show unread mails or mails by a given filter or label!

This is filed as VB-109796 "allow Mail widget to show any filter, especially Unread"