Dashboard Management Decisions
We want to be able to manage the layout and content of the dashboard inline (similar to panels IPE but more specific). To do this we are creating a Manage Mode state, in which another sidebar becomes visible to allow dragging in of blocks, and all existing blocks become draggable to be rearranged. The blocks also become configurable (various settings) and gain some descriptive metadata to help understand the different contexts that they will be visible in.
We are going to support the core Layout plugin, but to speed up development we will not yet allow UI configuration for this. We will create a default layout and use that for all dashboard tabs until we have time to expand this functionality.
We cannot just place any block in the dashboard. We need to be able to make sure that required contexts are satisfied for the block, but also that any requirements that dashboard has on the block are available. To do this we discussed the pros/cons of using Annotation vs. an Interface requirements. We decided that for now we would use an annotation, because you can annotate existing blocks whereas if we created an Interface (while being more flexible) would require developers to create new Block plugins to allow them to appear in the Dashboard selection.
We will provide functionality to place blocks for Profiles and Views out of the box, and maybe more later.
