Browser-laptop: Dashboard (about:newtab) - allow more tiles / pins

[bsclifton]

We had a row control originally available that would let you toggle between 1, 2, and 3 rows of tiles / icons on the new tab page. This was removed with https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/commit/967362846d1a06bf8fa042fd8e0b3b85650ab57d#diff-dbb992f7cd2508b46d5cd98e609be5a5

We should consider either re-adding that functionality OR finding another way to add icons to the new tab page. Multiple rows was originally removed because there are some dupes of entries (ex: subdomains show, etc) which we plan to solve with https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/5338

cc: @bradleyrichter @cezaraugusto

[cezaraugusto]

I agree.

For reference if we go this way, additional rows were removed by this commit: https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/pull/5483/commits/967362846d1a06bf8fa042fd8e0b3b85650ab57d

[bradleyrichter]

was there any deduping work done? I'd like to enable the rows soon...

[bsclifton]

@bradleyrichter we never did decide what to do. Right now, subdomains are considered different... so let's say you have gmail.google.com and hangouts.google.com, those would be two different items.

We could just allow one per domain and then pick the subdomain with the highest visit count or "frecency" (see https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/5338 for the full scoop). This might be a good first step

[srirambv]

@bsclifton @bradleyrichter @cezaraugusto Instead of having the topsite tiles preloaded (as complained) , we can use a + button to add top sites allowing users to enter the site name and add it as top tile. The + can be hidden when the max tiles are reached.

Rough (bad) mockup

[bsclifton]

@srirambv I like that 😄

[bradleyrichter]

@bsclifton I think we need to allow subdomains so you can have gmail, g-photos, g-hangouts, gthis and gthat.

@srirambv this could work nicely...but I am now thinking we should have the tiles right-aligned because this looks strange with only one tile.

(still working on what to show by default. I think we need tiles there for users to understand how they work.)

[srirambv]

@bradleyrichter may be we can just leave one tile pinned and then a + button to add. Serves both the purpose of tile and pinned tile. What do you think?

[bradleyrichter]

First. let's put a plus button in a dotted square. I think this will be cleaner and a bit more intuitive. If needed, we can have 1 tile and 5 squares.

But I think we can pick some sites that most people will be fine with like wikipedia, DDG, twitter, etc....

something like this:

thoughts?

[srirambv]

+1 from community https://community.brave.com/t/dashboard-enhancement/2967/6

[cezaraugusto]

what happens when user hit the plus button? Modal with url input like Opera?

[srirambv]

Yes. Modal to enter URL and once click done display the favicon

[cezaraugusto]

super cool idea ++

[Mevrael]

Is there a way to have more then 6 top sites in dashboard right now?

[cezaraugusto]

@Mevrael it was possible when new tab was implemented but not at this moment.

[bsclifton]

Would be nice to be able to just drag the items out from bookmarks toolbar to the tile area

cc: @cezaraugusto, @bradleyrichter

[cezaraugusto]

@bsclifton +1 from me.

I'd like to propose a different approach to top sites too. Current isn't working fine IMO. What if we let top sites be a user-decision only? like a kind of "bookmarks for new tab" with model @bradleyrichter mentioned https://github.com/brave/browser-laptop/issues/7742#issuecomment-287220279.

For me collecting data from most accessed sites is only useful when user has no choice (aka Chrome). But we are too cool for that 😛 just my two cents

[bsclifton]

I love the idea of having it as another launch-pad, similar to the bookmarks toolbar (except with high res shots)

cc: @jenn-rhim for thoughts 😄

[eljuno]

+1 from community https://community.brave.com/t/win64-laptop-v0-19-95-general-feedback-minor-issues/11283?u=eljuno

[DesertDwarf]

I like this idea. What happened to it?

[allstate17]

Is this still being worked on? I recently installed Brave and this is something I immediately noticed that will stop me from using it very much.

[bsclifton]

@allstate17 nobody is actively working the issue unfortunately. But improvements to this would be fairly easy and we'd welcome a PR. Since we're not working on it, I unassigned @cezaraugusto

[bigt2000]

Is there any way to get this added back to the list of things to work on? I would really love to be able to customize the dashboard with specific links instead of how it currently lists them.

[bsclifton]

@bigt2000 unfortunately, we won't be able to complete this before we transition over to our new platform, Brave Core. I have an issue created there which you can use to track this functionality
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/353

For now, I'm going to close this as wontfix since we won't fix it with our current (Muon) codebase