A little a while ago I created this topic in my enthusiasm to see what people were able to build with HABPanel which was new at the time.
Over 500 replies and 100K views later it’s still going strong but it has led me to the conclusion that HABPanel is for devs… In it’s current state their is no way an average user can configure an automation dashboard that actually feels uniform and looks good. Don’t get me wrong there are some gorgeous examples in that topic but they have all taken extensive time doing actual web dev to get them looking that good. HABPanel is super customisable… caveat… so long as you are some sort of web developer
When are we going to see a tablet friendly dashboard UI that actually suits the more average users out there like me? Something that feels consistent and looks good?
The big drive of OH2 was to extend the user base further to people who didn’t want to dig in the code by using the things like the paper UI etc…
Is there a way that people can package their HABPanel design and it’s components into individual themes or packages that the rest of us could easily install? I have installed a few of the widgets from the gallery but there is absolutely no consistency in design across them all and my dashboard just ends up looking less than average…
Apologies for the vent of my frustrations, but I would like to see how this kind of conversation pans out.
You might want to come by to the developer section. In preparation for OH3 there are a few topics regarding UIs. Manpower is at the moment concentrated on developing a replacement for Paper UI, Classic UI, Modern UI, Habmin.
Habpanel is more or less last on the list unfortunately.
I think HABpanel is one of the best UIs out there and it was the main reason for me to switch to openHAB.
Even beginners are able to visualize their most important items.
The more experienced users can do almost everything with the custom widget. Sadly the widget gallery contains mostly crap.
What’s missing are more and better tutorials explaining what’s possible with the custom widget.
I have to say I am a big fan of HABpanel .
I agree that some on the basic widget could do with a few more customization options but overall one can achieve a good looking UI by using the widgets only
With the widget gallery I meant the widgets provided by users - not the standard widgets (dummy, button, …). I hope I communicated this the right way?
With only the standard widgets one can achieve quite good results with a “common” design.
If you load custom widgets from the gallery it is starting to get ugly…
The forum is not the right place to host those anyway. That is a solution to save costs for the foundation.
We would normally require a review process for widgets, so that malicious widgets and questionable widgets are not listed at all.
No, you did not. People have shared their efforts so you can click a button, pay them zero, and use their work or base yours off it. Most of them aren’t well versed in web development but they solved their problem anyway and contributed back, and that’s laudable.
With communicating “the right way” I only wanted to make sure people understand what type of widgets I don’t like. This was not to apologize my wording.
Only because you don’t have to pay for something, it should not be automatically protected against criticism.
Some of the widgets are really nice, but many of them won’t fit in any consistent design.
This is only my subjective opinion. Every user is completely free to use what (s)he wants.
Criticize what you want but do so with RESPECT. Nothing and I mean NOTHING in this life is free. If your not old enough to realize this, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Time is more valuable than money.
Keep that in mind next time you want to criticize something “free”.
@ysc I thank you and everyone else that contributes time to OH. Keep up the good work.
Maybe “official” widgets and “un-official” widgets is an approach that could mean official ones have been vetted and conform to a standard design… And then “un-official” widgets is where all the testing and ground breaking is done before they are potentially tidied up and converted to an official widget?
