Introducing dashboardthemes - experimental themes for Shinydashboard

shiny
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Introducing a BETA release of dashboardthemes - an experimental R package designed to provide custom theme options for Shinydashboard applications.

More details are given in the below links:

Blog post: https://nik01010.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/introducing-dashboardthemes/
Github repo and detailed instructions: https://github.com/nik01010/dashboardthemes

Please read the disclaimer before using this package.

Feel free to provide any comments or feedback.

N

24 Likes
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Hi Nik,

That's a very great idea ! :slight_smile:
I'm trying your package right now and as far as I see it seems really nice, thank you !

I have just one question : how to specify the color for valueBox elements, as in the screenshots available in your github ? For instance, with the "purple_gradient" theme, I don't know how to obtain the pastel colors you seem to have.

Thank you in advance !

And long live "dashboardthemes" ! :smiley:

Best regards,

A.D.

1 Like
3

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your feedback - let me know if you experience any issues with it!

It's possible to change the colour of valueBox elements directly from their functions, and there's no need for the themes package to do that. Simply change the colour parameter in valueBox. Below are the examples I used.

N

        ,valueBox(
          value = "100"
          ,subtitle = "Value box: description"
          ,color = "purple"
          ,icon = icon("pie-chart")
          ,width = 6
        )
        
        ,valueBox(
          value = "-100"
          ,subtitle = "Value box: description"
          ,color = "light-blue"
          ,icon = icon("align-right")
          ,width = 6
        )
1 Like
4

Interesting!

Does your package allow to increase/decrease the size of UI elements (eg, height of input field) or does it only allow controls over styling like colors and font?

5

Hi Nik,

Thank you for your quick reply !

I was wondering how to access the "special" colors you seem to have in the screenshot of the theme : I think they are the colors for status, so not avalaible for valueBox, am I right ?

I will continue my test and let you know if I have remarks. Thank you !

Best regards,

A.D.

6

Hi Aline,

The special colours are indeed for status (e.g. primary, success, etc.) which can be applied to box() elements. However, I haven't configured valueBox() to utilise these special colours. So regardless of the theme you have chosen, you'll always get the default valueBox palette. I think it might be possible to have the theme package override these as well, but I'm not sure if that's something users would always want?

N

7

Hi pomchip,

You can increase/decrease the size of certain elements, for example font size, border radius size, shadow size etc - you can see a full list of options by running ??shinyDashboardThemesDIY in R. There isn't currently support for changing height of input fields, but I imagine that should be relatively simple if you think it's worth it.

N

8

@nik01010

I will egoistically say that is is worth. I frequently struggle with the lack of available screen real estate because my apps include a lot of input fields. I often have to break done my UI into tabs to fit every inputs into one screen height, which may be a good thing or not.
I have been looking for a while for a "compact" theme with smaller font size, input field height, padding, etc, which would allow me to fit more inputs within the same real estate.

9

No worries, I've logged this as a request on the GitHub page and will investigate in due course. https://github.com/nik01010/dashboardthemes/issues/2

More generally, if you're struggling with fitting a large amount of input elements on screen, have you considered using collapsible or conditional panels to limit the amount of detail shown and activate sections only when they're required? It's also worth considering using tabBox panels, and "Next" button(s) to guide users through different stages of the input process.

N

10

Nik,
Your dashboardthemes package is incredibly useful and is just what I've been looking for! I'm testing it right now and so far it works beautifully.

THANK YOU,
Judy

11

These look awesome!

Hopefully without hijacking your announcement thread, are you aware of similar theming options for RStudio flexdashboard (not using Shiny)?

12

Awesome package

This is exactly what i need. I never used the base shiny package. But i had to style the shiny dashboard with css. If you add certain cool animation. That would be great. it would help if it could style the boxes and input and out put widgets as well. Just like you did on the purple theme with round corners on info boxes.

Please provide some more themes like that. Should be at least 10 to choose from.

13

Thanks for your feedback, let me know if you have any issues!

N

1 Like
14

Sorry, I haven't really used flexdashboard yet, so am not aware.

15

Thanks a lot, will take these points into account when working on updates!

1 Like
16

I just tried it. It is awesome!!!! thanks for such a package We needed it. It's just that I loose logos and pictures with the Theme. But I like everything else.

KUDOS way to go.

17

@pomchip

Following your request, I've made an update to allow changing the textbox/dropbox/button height and padding. Hopefully this helps.

https://nik01010.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/dashboardthemes-v1-0-1/

1 Like
18

This package is fantastic, and it works very well for me. Thank you for providing it! A question I have is if there's a way to provide a custom background image in the shinyDashboardThemeDIY function. If not do you plan on adding that?

19

I haven't come across use of background images in Shiny apps before - do you have any examples you can share (either full apps or example code)?

21

Hi @nik01010

Do you have plans for an official CRAN release of the dashboardthemes package? I can only install packages from official repos at my work place.

Sebastien

1 Like