By nickbits on

Hi All,

I ahve been using Homebox for a while now and just came accross the dashboard module. The foremer has jsut released a new version (not production ready) and so I thought I would give both a spin and share my findings with everyone.

So first question "What do they do"?

Well both modules are designed to give a customizable page, similar to iGoogle.

What features do they have?

You can read the full details on the module pages, but essentially they share some common features:

  • A customizable page with blocks using drag and drop
  • Allow for per-user customizable pages

These are the two primary features.

The dashboard module has a slick UI for adding new "widgets" (boxes to the dashboard system), but in my opinion some parts of the UI need to be finished as the are difficult to use. There is also, at present no way, that I can see, to allow default settings. For example I would like by default news in column 1, weather in column 2 and comments in column 3. Final issue is that, again as far as I can see from the UI, there is no way to change the layout.

The homebox module on the other hand, and I refer to version 2 here, is simple and easy to use. The UI is not as slick as some of those in the dashboard module. However you can set a default layout and easily enable some items to be fixed, draggable, etc. There are also two extra gems tucked away which are:

  1. You can use a homebox with Organic Groups
  2. You can use homebox with features

Okay, so this isn't a full test or review, only a quick and dirty one but gives you a feel for what they can do. Both look like they will be useful and powerful modules. The dashboard one is being used on the drupal.org re-design. Both, in my opinion, are still very much in the development stage. I am not 100% sure, but to me it looks like there is replication of work between the two modules.

Hope that is of help to some of you.
Regards,
Nick

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

queryblitz’s picture

queryblitz commented

I'm using Homebox on two of my sites, and from the perspective of a Drupal newbie it's been extremely easy to set up, theme, maintain, update, switch stuff around, etc. If you're trying to choose between that or Dashboard, it seems like the clue is pretty much in the name. Do you want to set up a Dashboard, or a Home page? I haven't used Dashboard, but it just seems more... dashboardy. Go ahead and check out www.Lickitornot.com to see what I've done with Homebox. I've edited the code a bit, but it works pretty similar right out of the 'box.' Cheesy pun intended.

nickbits’s picture

nickbits commented

Hi,

Totally agree with how easy homebox is to setup. However the names, in my opinion, don't distinguish what they are for. The both give personilised pages which could be on the users page or homepage, or any other page, so both could be considered a dashboard style module or a homebox style. There is an awful lot of overlap between the two modules. Initially there were a lot of differences but the modules, again to me, appear to be converging.

------------oOo----------------------
Nick Young (www.nickbits.co.uk)

queryblitz’s picture

queryblitz commented

I wasn't here when they started so I couldn't say, but the reason I thought of Homebox as more of a home page is because it reminded me of the old YouTube front page. I was looking for something similar on my site, so homebox made sense and seemed familiar. Of course, now we're seeing more sites (even YouTube) move to more Facebook style, or dashboard style themes, and the line that separates any of them is becoming a lot more cloudy.
So yeah, I see your point. And now that Drupal.org is using Dashboard and I'm becoming more familiar with it, it's hard to see any real differences.
Still, to another newbie, I'll stick with my original description til I can think of any actual distinctions :P.

rjl’s picture

rjl commented

I imagine it was just a quick mix up, but you stated Drupal is using dashboard, but it is actually using homebox. The tab link text says "Dashboard" but the underlying module is homebox.

Thanks for the comparisons!

queryblitz’s picture

queryblitz commented

Thanks for the correction!