Object types in views

[hjaltij]

First of all, this project is looking great.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but why does the sidebar offer a lot more options for object types than the main area / views?

I only see Camera and Button for the views but the sidebar has a lot more to choose from.

Thanks!

[janiskelemen]

I think the sidebar is mainly for displaying data and details about entities. The main section is for controlling your entities (toggle lights etc) and details are shown in modals when you click on the buttons. I guess there will be other types in the future but the focus right now is to add basic support for most common entities first and add more advanced things later.
@matt8707 please correct me if I'm wrong here.

[hjaltij]

Feels a bit bakcwards to me as there’s very limited space in the sidebar. I’d like some of my views to have graphs but I see the appeal of the simplicity with allowing only controls in the main area.

It would be great if those controls could be expanded like the climate entity so you can interact it without opening a modal.

[hjaltij]

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that is project is very young and I’m not expecting this functionality to be there yet. Mainly trying to understand the design and focus of the project.

[matt8707]

It isn't a technical obstacle. The plan is to create one 'sidebar graph' and one 'main graph' because they will be slightly different. Creating two will make development easier. Each should have its own distinct look and functionality. Once these are in place, we can optimize them, compare the differences and merge them into a one. Yes, the plan is that we can freely move them between the sidebar and main areas, enabling them to change reactively. Remeber that the current state of this project is in pre-beta. To help with development, you could port sidebar items to the main view instead.

[ysmilda]

The way I see it is that this will be creating a lot of extra work and implementing features twice in the future.

To me it would make sense to have these difference under a toggle to leave it up to the user what they want to display where. This way the general setup of the interface could be as simple as:

• Enable or disable the sidebar in the settings
• Add object
• Select type, entity, look and feel
• Drag to desired location (either sidebar or view)

This way there is less maintenance and more flexibility to let the user be creative with it.

[matt8707]

Yes, as I mentioned, that is the plan. However, for the sake of development speed, it is currently segregated for prototyping.

[ysmilda]

I didn't quite get that from your earlier reply, but it's great that that's the vision. As for development now; wouldn't it be more beneficial to start implementing this now instead of porting the sidebar to the main view?

This is quite a big change with a big reach which will probably become more difficult as time goes on. It seems faster to rewrite it to a single item type now and than add all the upcoming changes.

[matt8707]

Yeah, I get what you're saying, and you're welcome to try, but I will not merge it if it introduces more issues than it solves.