Certainly wouldn’t want HA to become like Apple or MS.
But having a little UX-over-openness wouldn’t hurt HA. In fact, I think it’s one of the things that throws people off at this point. If HA wants to remain a platform for tech savvy people, that’s OK. I see great potential for HA if more people were to adopt this. Making HA for more people by sacrificing some openness is an interesting thing to think about.
Answering your question directly: Apple does force MS or Google or any other vendor into their UX constructs. Which I think, in and of itself is a good thing
Yes, they do, which is what I wanted you to say. You also brought up what I was going to bring up: Microsoft conforms. So, you expect portainer to conform to HAs ui? What about other commercial products that are addons?
This discussion is way too interesting and too long to be held here in text. Any (online) HA meet up somewhere soon?
Coming from a UX/design background I would make the case any system or platform would benefit from consistency and some guidelines. It’s a fine balance, sometimes sacrificing freedom over structure or vice versa.
It’s just curiousity I guess, trying to understand where HA is headed and where everyone, developers and maintainers specifically, want HA to go. If HA is aiming for mainstream adoption, I don’t believe this can be done without UX alignment. It’s just too tech oriented for that IMHO.
I don’t know exactly what this means technically. Maybe, as you say, it can’t be done. Maybe HA wants or needs to stay with more tech oriented audiences. Which is fine. I have not judgement, but would love to see HA getting a little more mainstream. Just no too much.
To put it into perspective, all home assistant does now is map a button that opens a browser to another software and shows the other softwares UI.
You’re asking for home assistant to build a tool kit that allows anyone to build an interface for their software in home assistant. Then have home assistant force companies that don’t even know that home assistant exists to use said toolkit.
You can garner all the votes from voters on this forum and I still don’t think this would ever happen. And it’s not because HA wouldn’t want to. It’s because HA has no power over other companies. Making requirements and forcing them on other companies would be shooting themselves in their own foot. And this isn’t even broaching the custom addon subject, which HA has no power over.
Mainstream vendors want to lock you into their proprietary systems so they can sell your marketing data, The closest we have are the Z-Wave & Zigbee standards but vendors still can mess up compatibility.
Can’t it be a little more MVP? For example, would it be feasible to have HACS Integrations and Frontend merge into 1? ( I would gladly repost that request in the proper place if this is not the right place). I can’t believe I’m the only one always mixing those two up. Or maybe someone from the HA team could do this. Same with the Supervisor Add on store. I understand this is a separate part, not from or by HA, but if somehow these ‘essential’ parts would make it onto 1 page, even though they’d keep their own underlying segments, that might help.
Again I want to point that I’m just expressing my thoughts into this request here, not trying to have HA developers do the impossible. Just voicing what others might experience too and apparently get some discussion going.
I am not one for rallying votes, if you say it can’t be done. Feel free to close this topic, if it’s out of the realm of the feasible. Again, just expressing my thoughts on getting HA further. Hope that’s safe
Thanks for the good discussion. Would love to continue this in person, online or IRL.
And I’m one happy and grateful HA user. Totally integrated into my life and my households’
No because HACS adds frontend utilities, themes, integrations, and appdeamon apps (automations). Also this has already been asked for… 20+ times? Home assistant has ZERO interest in supporting custom anything.
The maintainer of HACS is on the main team. He said “No” to this question multiple times. HACS is his custom project and it has no affiliation to home assistant, therefore nothing will ever be done unless he wants to move it.
Addons are not the same as integrations. You add an addon to your system, then you add the integration that pairs with the addon afterward.
FYI, you’re not the first person to bring this up and you wont be the last. But the lack of understanding the difference between an integration and an addon is always what spawns these threads. From a technical standpoint they are very different things and require very different onboarding processes. This is why they will never be merged into 1.
So other useful software should not be allowed in Home Assistant if it fails to conform to Home Assistant’s UI? That would effectively eliminate a lot of Add-Ons. There’s no way a major software project, like Node-Red, is going to redesign its UI to meet some other project’s idea of what it should look like.
However, if you have a proven track record of convincing other software projects to look like your software project, I suggest you contact Home Assistant’s founder and offer your services.
Yes, if HA would want to become adopted more, it should definitely be more strict. And if that means add ons stepping out, so be it. But, if HA remains popular, it’s not a given that add ons will step out, they may adapt as well. Like I said, it’s about possibilities and roadmap.
That’s an impractical position to adopt in an open-software world; to deprive oneself of added functionality simply because its appearance is different.
If your stance were adopted, the Node-Red Add-on would have to go and I don’t believe that would be a very popular decision with the many Home Assistant users who employ it, especially if they learn the reason is because it “looks different”.
Anyway, you’re certainly free to submit an FR, and share your opinions about what you feel is best for Home Assistant’s future. However, due to entirely practical considerations, I don’t imagine this FR is likely to be fulfilled.
I just remembered where there is more strictness, You could move to openHAB. I just moved back here recently from there. Their development is quite strict and all addons are developed together.
There are significant downsides though. That is why I am back here even though I was quite deeply involved in Z-Wave over there.
