Feature
Improving discourse-layout widgets
Description
I’ve been using the discourse-layout plugin on several setups now. This is a collection of feedback on the widgets.
Use Case
Improve the overall ease of use and reduce custom css and html modifications to make the widgets look of a piece.
Here’s a screenshot of a setup I’m using with the plugin. The widgets in the sidebar are in order:
- Category List
- Profile
- Custom Html
- Topics List
Category List
This works really well out of the box! The only thing I adapt a bit is making the checkmark icon on unread topics either smaller or hiding it. It feels quite big right now and seeking too much attention.
Profile
I adapted the code to have a direct link to Assigned (renamed Leads here). I think the widget would profit a lot if one could list specific links to the user profile in the widget setting. It would be superb if it would also show notification bubbles for Messages etc… but that might be a lot of coding?
Would also be good if this widget is not rendered when no user is registered.
Custom Html
I repeatedly use this to make a tag-based navigation menu. I think it would be great to generally have a Tag List widget to use with the plugin and have a similar styling as the Category List. Right now this approach needs quite some custom css to make it look of a piece (as you can see on the screenshot, where it’s not done yet).
As I hand-coded the tag icons here, that’s another thing I noticed about the Category List: It’s not aware of category icons. That would also be a helpful feature.
I also wondered if the form field for the custom html in the widget settings could be bigger? That would allow for some quick hacks right from the settings. Now it’s just a single line, so you practically have to copy/paste from a separate file.
Topics List
That’s a great widget! Would be great to have it follow the same styling as the Category List as well. Right now it just changes the cursor when hovering over a link.
The List title (here in red) is rendered as a link, but without reference. That is misleading and would be good to have it link to the category by default.
Overall
My ideal view of how the widgets could work: have a widget for
- user profile
- custom html
- lists
And have the list widget offer a title and list entries, that can be links to categories, topics, tags or custom html.
For this the plugin would need to allow using multiple widgets of the same type. But that could offer quite some creativity I think. Being able to name a widget and add it to the layouts menu.