What is Übersicht?

“Übersicht” is a German word that means “overview” or “summary” in English. The name of the software was chosen because it allows users to have a quick overview of various information on their desktop. It’s also a play on words, because in German the name of the software can be translated as “super sight” which refers to the ability to have a lot of information at a glance.

Übersicht is a lightweight and powerful application that allows users to create and customize desktop widgets using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With Übersicht, you can create widgets that display information such as the weather, calendar events, system resource usage, and more. The widgets can be customized to display the information in any format and can be positioned anywhere on the desktop, allowing you to create a personalized and efficient workspace.

Übersicht widgets are created using a simple and user-friendly interface that allows you to preview and edit the widget’s code. The widgets are also highly customizable, allowing you to change the appearance and behavior of the widgets to suit your needs. Additionally, Übersicht widgets can be shared with other users, and there are a variety of widgets available for download from the developer’s website.

The application is open-source and free to use, and it’s also lightweight, it won’t affect your computer performance. Overall, Übersicht is a powerful and versatile tool for creating custom desktop widgets on macOS.

Custom Desktop Widgets / MenuBar Enhancements

There are several other tools similar to Übersicht that allow you to create custom desktop widgets. Some of the most popular alternatives include:

1. Geektool (Mac): is a powerful and flexible tool for creating custom desktop widgets on macOS. It allows you to display information such as the weather, calendar events, system resource usage, and more.
   I used it for a while, but never really got into it any deeper. It has been a resource hog for some as well.
2. xbar (Mac): is an open-source tool that  lets you put the output from any script/program in your macOS menu bar. This is a complete rewrite of BitBar in Go.
   This will also make into my workflow :)
3. SwiftBar :Add custom menu bar programs on macOS in three easy steps: Write a shell script.Add it to SwiftBar … there is no 3rd step!
4. Conky (Mac / Limnux) is a free, light-weight system monitor for X, that displays any kind of information on your desktop. It can also run on macOS, output to your console, a file, or even HTTP.
5. Hologram Desktop (Mac / Free / InAppPurchases)
6. WidgetWall (Mac / Paid) : Looks nice, but too limited for me.
7. Beaconly (Mac / Free / InAppPurchases ): Beaconly is a flexible, easy to use data aggregating menu app that ties relevant information to you, beautifully one click-away in your macOs menu bar.
8. Rainmeter: is a Windows-only tool similar to Übersicht. It allows users to create custom desktop widgets using a variety of pre-built skins or by creating your own skins using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
   This is the goto solution for any Windows user!

What are you using these for?

With many external systems in play, its always crucial to keep an eye on things. I have build nice dashboards, using Grafana, InfluxDB, NetData and Prometheus. But they are either displayed in a browser window or on a separate screen.

If you have 2 / 3 monitors or an ultra-wide screen, you have a lot of Desktop real-estate you can use.

That is something that I have been looking at for years, but only tried for a short period of time. This year I want to really build out desktop and menu widgets , that help me to get an even better overview of things and help reduce repetitive tasks.

I will share links to things I like and share access to the widgets I build myself or tweaked.

Übersicht – desktop widgets / working & planned

These are the current things that are in progress or planned.

1. RSS Widget: This allows me to easily fetch the latest news from the websites I visit multiple times each day.
   You can already find a first version of the widget on Github, forked from Eric Dasque.
   
   I have two widgets currently setup on the left and right of my ultra-wide screen. Gathering information from all my Youtube subscriptions, tech websites and news outlets.
   
   Its using Go for the command line and i rewrote parts to make it completely template-based to allow flexible output variations.
   I have some other ideas, but those will make it into future versions. This is still based of the Classic widget architecture, but I also plan to move it to the JSX architecture.
2. Weather widget for Openweather: Straight forward Openweather widget forked from Li Xueli. Displays the current weather and allows to expand to show the next 7 days.
   This is build on the new JSX architecture of Übersicht. I did a couple of tweaks and removed the geo-location. Changes will be shared soon.
3. Fancy Clock / Date / Week
   I have a basic version working.
4. Email: Building a widget that combines IMAP, Gmail and local Mail.
   I have a basic version working.
5. Asana: Pull latest tasks.
   A basic version is already working.
6. Grafana: Dashboard integration
7. Netdata
8. Glances
9. Uptime Monitoring: Uptime Kuma / UptimeRobot / Statping
10. Cloudflare: Stats
11. MQTT / Node-Red / N8N

xbar – Extend Menu Bar / working & planned

Nothing to share yet ….

INTRODUCTION

This is not a tutorial, but more like sharing a nice geeky road-trip ;)

I have a pretty good understanding of the Youtube Data API, as I have actively used it on portalZINE TV in the past, to upload videos and dynamically link them to my local post-types.

For one of my latest customer projects (TYPEMYKNIFE / typemyknife.com), the task was a bit more complicated and the goal was to make it as future-proof as it can be with the Google APIs :)

Prerequisites / References to get you started:

• Youtube Data API Documentation
• Google Cloud Console
• OAuth 2.0 Playground / Generating a refresh token for Youtube API calls (a bit old, but close enough)
• Google API SDK / Composer
• OAuth 2 Simplified / Getting Started with OAuth 2.0

THE GOALS

The goal for the setup was to actively synchronize WooCommerce products with linked / attached videos, with their source at Youtube.

As the website is multilingual, WPML integration is critical as well. And as Youtube allows localization of title and description, that can be added into the mix quiet easily in the future ;)

The following product attributes should be mirrored and optimised for Youtube:

• Product Title
• Product Description (5000 character limit at Youtube)
  My customer already has a pretty long and detailed description, which is perfect for Youtube!
  We average around 2900-3000 characters.
• Product Tags (500 character length limit at Youtube)

The following attributes should be integrated into the description to enrich the Youtube description:

• Introduction
• Product Link to WooCommerce Product / Shop
• Socials
• Legal Information
• Hash Tags (local post-type to add recurring / important hash tags)
• Outro

All of these attributes will be collected internally and assigned using a simple template system, which allows the customer to move parts around freely and freely layout the description for Youtube.

The following stats will be collected for review:

• Products without a video linked (no relation)
• Products with the same video linked (duplication)
• Videos without a product in the system
• Total amount of videos / amount of video-pages (50 videos max per page)
• Total amount of products with videos

Youtube SEO

These are the relevant key aspects, that help to get your videos more views.

• Relevant text featuring at least 1,000 characters
• Keywords that are relevant on Google Search and YouTube and describe your video
• Hashtags, can also be used within the text
• Timestamps Links to related content / affiliate links

PREPARING AUTH / OAUTH2 AT GOOGLE

In the past access to the Youtube Data API was far easier and less limited, when it comes to offline / none expiring OAuth2 refresh tokens.

When you are building a server-side application that is only available to your customer or moderators, it makes no sense to run that app through the Google App verification. Your app will never be used in public.

The Youtube Data API and its scopes, are defined as sensitive and therefor require third-party security assessment for public access.

The scopes I am requesting are https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload + https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.

Because of that its far easier to just setup OAuth 2 in test mode and restrict access to your customer and specific additional accounts only (up to 100 test users allowed). What all these account need, is access to your own or Brand Youtube Channel.

Preparation in the Google Cloud Console:

• Activate Youtube Data API
• Create OAuth2 Client ID
  • Name
  • Allowed Redirects
• Setup OAuth-Consent Screen
  • Name of the App
  • Support Email
  • Logo
  • Allowed Domains
  • Typ: External
  • Setup all test-users, all of these need access to your Youtube channel already

A detailed description can be found here.

You can circumvent verification for the consent screen, by using an organisation setup at Google. Here some infos about that. With that setup offline refresh tokens should work fine.

Update: Just tried that, but wont work with a branded youtube account, even though the cloud user has admin access to it. Not giving up yet, but Google / Youtube really makes it difficult to just have a simple offline solution for specific tasks ;) BTW also forced the login hint, to make sure the right account is logged in : $client->setLoginHint(‘YourWoreksapceAccount’); !

You might have heard of the “The League of Extraordinary Packages“. It is a group of developers who have banded together to build solid, well tested PHP packages using modern coding standards.

They also offer an OAuth2-client + OAuth2 Google extension that can be used.

SERVER SETUP

On the server, the Google API PHP SDK can be easily integrated using Composer.

In my customer plugin I neatly separated all relevant areas in classes & traits:

• Online Authentification, with a 60 minute session
• Offline Authentification, with a 1 week expiration (might explain that in more detail in the future.)
• Error handling and debug information
• Listing of videos
• Updating of videos
• Updating of tags
• Updating hashtags
• Backup old data locally, before update. There should always be an option to restore, especially with 500 videos :)
• Settings & templates
• REST routes / endpoints

You can check the expiry time of your access token by accessing:
https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v1/tokeninfo?access_token=YOUR_TOKEN

“A Google Cloud Platform project with an OAuth consent screen configured for an external user type and a publishing status of “Testing” is issued a refresh token expiring in 7 days.” – Google

Basic Auth example from the SDK:

A simple upload example can be found here .

UPDATING A SINGLE VIDEO
BULK VIDEO UPDATES

All operations to and from the Youtube Data API are rate limited. What is important for us, are the queries per day.

The default quota is 10.000 queries per day, sounds a lot, but is easily gone after updating 150-200 videos. You can request this limit to be raised, but again a lot of paperwork and questions that are just not needed.

The above limit just means, that you need to cache as many queries as possible, to only query live when needed ;)

Something you learn fast, when experimenting with different things! I hit that limit multiple times in the first few days, with around 500 videos in the queue.

Different operation cost you different amount of units

• A read operation that retrieves a list of resources — channels, videos, playlists — usually costs 1 unit.
• A write operation that creates, updates, or deletes a resource usually costs 50 units.
  10.000 / 50 are 200 updates per day :)
• A search request costs 100 units.
• A video upload costs 1600 units. Glad we are not handling the upload as well, but technically easy ;)

It also helps to use the Google Developer Playground to testdrive the Youtube Data API with your own credentials while optimising your own code.
You can define your own OAuth 2.0 configuration by clicking the cog in the upper right corner.

I setup the bulk updating to allow splitting it over multiple days, if required. For this an offline refresh token is needed, as the standard token expires after 60 minutes.

My customer can also just update a single video, when changes are applied to the product or a new product has been added.

If more frequent updates are required, I will ask for a raise of the queries per day. You can circumvent the limit by using multiple Google Cloud Platform accounts with new OAuth credentials, but really an overkill right now. I have done that in the past ;)

LAYOUT & DESIGN

The GUI is just based of Bootstrap, to make it simple and clean. Using my own wrapper to make it work within the WordPress admin.

For all ajax operations, I am using htmx and _hyperscript, which I will talk about in another article in the future.

Really neat and clean way to build single page interfaces.

The whole plugin runs of its own REST API endpoint. Just love using WordPress as a headless system.

I used TWIG / Timber for the templates, to separate logic and layout. Timber has been my goto solution for years now. It drives my own and many customer websites.

CONCLUSION

This has been a lot of fun, maybe a bit too much LOL

I do geek-out about many of my projects, but this experience helped me to bring my WordPress toolbox to the next level. This will help to drive other things in the future.

Working so deeply with the Youtube Data API has been fun and feels so easy now, after all remaining problems have been solved.

Would have loved this during my portalZINE TV days ;)

I you read all this, you just earned yourself a badge for completion ;)

Need something similar or something else? Just say hi and we can talk.

ENJOY CODING ….

Watching from the sidelines

VR has not just arrived, but it finally arrived for me and the masses ;)

I have been watching VR evolving from the sidelines for the past few years. Its been a fun ride, from the first prototypes to what we have now.

The biggest problem in the past, has been image quality and the huge upfront investment for me. With the latest generation all of this has completely changed.

As a developer …

I am constantly keeping up with new technologies and have been diving into WebVR for some time now.

Its so easy to export your own simple Unity VR project into WebVR and integrate it into your own web projects.

Unreal Engine also provides options to work on VR projects. Or build upon the WebXR API.

Microsoft also has a foot in the door, with MRTK (Allows to integrate teleporting easily / Releases).

Oculus Quest 2

With the announcement of the Oculus Quest 2 last year, I finally decided to dive in myself. Standalone VR allows me to concentrate on WebVR and experiment, while still having the option to expand into the linked PC-universe in the future as well.

PC Link / PC Rig / PC VR

I have no plans to invest into a beefy gaming rig yet, but have been trying out cloud solutions using Shadow and Paperspace Gaming / Paperspace $10 Coupon (KS4Q2TA).

Update: Latency is the biggest problem with these solutions and it can be a hit & miss! My Paperspace experience was close to perfect for pure desktop experiences, for VR sadly not :) Can not testdrive Shadow right now, as the waitinglist is already showing September 2021 LOL CRAZY! Local latency can be greatly optimized by using Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi Direct.

With the current GPU prices, building a machine makes hardly any sense. I would love to build a small form-factor PC with a Shuttle XPC for example ;) Maybe later this year ….

I invested in VR-Comfort for now ;) I transformed the Oculus Quest 2 into a FrankenQuest with the DAS-Mod (HTC VR VIVE Deluxe Audio Strap). Loving the new look, audio and perfect weight balance :) Perfect for longer sessions.

Building a VR READY PC in 2021

I am officially infected. I decided to upgrade an old computer to minimum VR specs, to at least tryout PC-VR :)
The final build is ghetto and really a tight fit, but it works perfectly :)

For 2021 and the current shortages, this is a big win! The whole upgrade was about 400 EUR, with 250 EUR for the new GPU.

Here are my current PC-VR specs:

Area	Before	After / Comment
PC	Fujitsu P900 – i3	Nice clean case. Mainboard D2990 (ultra small μATX). Really tiny! This would normally not be my dream mainboard, but I am using what I have :) Trying to keep costs low.
Power Supply	Stock	EVGA 600 W1. Better cooling and needed power for the GPU.
CPU	i3 – 2120	i7 2600K . Big change in overall performance.
CPU Cooler & Fan	Stock	Be Quiet Pure Rock Slim BK030. (Had to do some mods to install it)
RAM	8GB	Enough for now.
GPU	NVIDIA 1030 GTX – Low profile	NVIDIA 1060 6gb Inno3D. That card takes up all slots, had to add a riser card to play with some USB 3.0 cards :)
USB3	USB2	Inateck PCIe USB 3.0  – KTU3FR-4P , again connected via a riser card! Make sure that the card gets proper power (green light on the card itself), that is why another Inateck card failed to connect or had random disconnects ;) That card charges and connects perfectly with the Oculus Quest 2. I was almost giving up and glad I found a working solution ;)
USB LINK		Using a 3m long cable from KIWI Design, works without any problems and has secure fit on the Oculus Quest 2
Bluetooth	–	Bluetooth 4.0 – Asus BT-400

All that is required, has been added and now the PC VR universe is open for exploration :) As hardware is getting more expensive every week, I updated a second machine with comparable specs and have 2 machines that can run VR with entry /decent specs :)

Interesting Platforms

There are many new platforms providing access to new tools and often an easy access to a broader community. Some of them with nice build tools in VR.

• Facebook Horizon Venues (Beta Access only)
• REC Room
• Altspace VR (Unity World Builder) / Altspace VR for Enterprise + Microsoft Mesh
• Microsoft Mesh Platform / Mixed Reality Developer Program
• Firefox Hubs (Mozilla Spoke)
• VRChat
• Sansar
• VIRCadia
• Tivoli Cloud (Blender Tools)

Open Source

“OpenXR is an open, royalty-free standard for access to virtual reality and augmented reality platforms and devices. It is developed by a working group managed by the Khronos Group consortium.”

You will find a bunch of efforts on the way, to build the next open multi-platform VR solution.

• Monando (XRDesktop / Collabora)
• Arcan
• Safespaces
• VR on Linux

Building experiences in VR

Building with Unity is always an option, but not the best solution for those that are just getting started or for those that just want a simple starting point to experiment ;)

• Zoe – Immersive 3D Creation Platform
  Create content directly in VR or using Unity :) Zoe is a perfect tool for Educators & Institutions.
• A-Frame. A web framework for building 3D/AR/VR experiences. Make 3D worlds with HTML and Entity-Component For Quest, Rift, WMR, SteamVR, mobile, desktop
• OpenSpace 3D – OpenSpace3D is a free and open-source platform, designed to create virtual and augmented-reality applications or games. If you are a 3D artist, a designer, a lab researcher, or just someone with a lot of passion and curiosity, you don’t need software development skills to use our platform.
• Amazon Sumerian is a set of tools for creating high-quality virtual reality (VR) experiences on the web. With Sumerian, you can construct an interactive 3D scene without any programming experience, test it in the browser, and publish it as a website that is immediately available to users.
• Mozilla Spoke – Create 3D social scenes for Hubs
• Wonderland Engine is a development platform for web-based graphics applications. It comes with an accessible 3D editor application – the Wonderland Editor – and an efficient WebAssembly based runtime that runs in the browser.

VR Office

Another evolving area is the office space. Some of the platforms above already dive into that area, like XRDesktop. But Oculus / Facebook itself is working on its Infinite Office integration.

Other solutions help to mirror your PC within VR and open new ways for collaboration:

• Immersed VR
• vSpatial
• Virtual Desktop
• BigScreen VR

The biggest problem is the mirroring of the keyboard. As soon as that is solved, this might become usable. Immerse VR provides an option to overlay a virtual representation of your keyboard, by mapping your real-life keyboard in VR.

Communities

Always important to stay informed. Here some communities are frequently visit:

• Reddit – OculusQuest
• Reddit – OculusQuest2
• Oculus Quest – Roadmap / Release Notes

Tools

• Oculus TrayTool – It’s a free application that helps you get the most out of your Oculus Rift & Oculus Quest, when connected via Link.

Here to stay

VR is here to stay, I would have never though it would take off 2020 / 2021. But we all face new challenges and technology is evolving to make space for new possibilities.

Not all gaming

While gaming / fitness / social are the entry point for VR currently, this whole market will expand quickly in 2021.

Really looking forward to new possibilities and another facet of my developer life.

Looking forward meeting some of you in the VR-Multiverse :)

Enjoy coding ….

“Klaro [klɛro] is a simple consent management platform (CMP) and privacy tool that helps you to be transparent about the third-party applications on your website. It is designed to be extremely simple, intuitive and easy to use while allowing you to be compliant with all relevant regulations (notably GDPR and ePrivacy).”

The tool is developed by KIPROTECT and can be found on Github.

Black & White

As I integrated Klaro on a couple of websites so far, I decided to make my work a bit easier and start building some basic clean themes for it.

I have a basic white and black&white theme so far. The download includes a testdrive folder, to showcase the themes. The white theme is also used on this website ;)

I really hate those standard consent management modals, that integrate badly into the website native design.

Klaro does a good job allowing to override its core theme and makes it a bit more pleasant. We do have to live with those modals from now on ;)

The themes are Sass-based and provide easy configuration options.

Enjoy!

cubicFUSION Themes for Klaro! @ Github

Klaro! Tweaks

Klaro is still missing some things, will collect some workarounds here for you to play with.

Missing events for consent modal open / closed …

Updates: Github Discussion
– 0.7.10 also adds custom callbacks to services (onAccept, onDecline, onInit) NICE!

Used a simple MutationObserver to do some magic for now, without diving into the core Klaro code for now. I am sure they already have an event listener or watcher setup.

I am always looking for easy ways to white label the WordPress administration for myself and my clients. A nice personal touch for each project and an easy way to declutter the interface.

These are my personal favorites, that I use on a regular basis.

Admin Themes / Login Page

There are a lot of solutions out there, but many break easily and are really heavy to load. Some of these solutions I tried also break easily on new WordPress Upgrades. The first two below are currently my favorites.

1. Slate Pro ( Commercial )
   “Slate Pro is a powerful WordPress admin theme plugin that reimagines WordPress with a clean and simplified design. White label your WordPress install with custom colors, a custom login screen, custom admin branding, and more. Slate Pro is now multisite compatible! Network activate to control the look of all sub-sites.”
   
   Slate Pro is a clean and simple admin theme, that does not try to alter the interface completely. Small changes that make a difference. Color adjustments, logos, simple menu & widget enhancements and login page tweaks. Compared to other solutions it has been a stable experience, even after multiple WordPress Updates.
   
   This is an install and enjoy solution!
   
2. Kodeo Admin UI ( Free – Open Source )
   “Kodeo Admin UI turns your WordPress backend into a clean and modern user interface. All elements are well designed and arranged for the best user experience.”
   
   Kodeo is another clean interface, that goes further than Slate Pro. Many areas of the admin theme have been changed. It works well with most 3rd party plugins, but I have had problems with some plugins doing their own little interface tweaks.
   With Kodeo your WordPress Admin completely transforms and gives it a really modern & clean look.
   
   This is an install and tweak solution! You might need to trim certain CSS properties to make it work for everything.
   
   
3. Material WP ( Commercial )
   “Material Design version of the WordPress Admin Interface”
   
   I have used this once or twice in the past. Its more of a honorable mention. The admin theme transforms the interface completely, but can feel sluggish on slower servers. It has an impressive set of options and gets regular updates.
   
   This is again an install and tweak solution! It works with most of the 3rd party plugins and Gutenberg, but some things might need to be trimmed by hand.

Menu Editors & User Groups

When sharing the administration with your customer, you often need to make it as simple a possible for them. Depending on your setup, the menu becomes cluttered and overwhelming really fast.

I often trim menus for each user role, to make only those options accessible that are really needed.

1. Admin Menu Editor Pro ( Free / Commercial )
   This tool has been part of many of my projects and has been a solid solution for years. You can hide & move menus, create new menus, tweak menus by user role, hide plugins and also tweak the admin toolbar with an extra addon.
   Worth every penny! There is a free version available, that might just provide enough functionality for your next project.
   
2. Groups ( Free )
   “Groups is designed as an efficient, powerful and flexible solution for group-oriented memberships and content access control. It provides group-based user membership management, group-based capabilities and access control for content, built on solid principles. Groups is light-weight and offers an easy user interface, while it acts as a framework and integrates standard WordPress capabilities and application-specific capabilities along with an extensive API.”
   
   This plugin allows you to add new user groups easily and can tie into the plugin above.

User Profiles

When sharing the administration with multiple users, its always nice to add some personality to the user profiles as well.

WP User Profiles
“WP User Profiles is a sophisticated way to edit users in WordPress.”

The plugin provides other small addons, like WP User Avatars. Neat plugin to tweak admins, editors and other users.

Admin Dashboard Replacements

1. cubicFUSION Admin Enhancer (Free)
   
   
   This is a new plugin I am currently working on. The current shortcodes addon can help you integrate dashboard widgets into the dashboard builders below.
   
   I am also working on my own dashboard builder, that requires none of the solutions below and builds upon WordPress core functionality.
   
   
2. Dashboard Welcome for Elementor (Free)
   
   
   “Dashboard Welcome by PowerPack Elements gives you full control over the WordPress welcome panel using Elementor.
   
   You can personalize the dashboard with content and design built with Elementor. You can add heading, contact information, form, video, images, affiliate links, etc.
   
   While the above plugin is free, you need a Elementor Pro License to use it!
   
   
3. Dashboard Welcome for Beaver Builder (Free)
   
   
   “Welcome by Beaver Addons gives you full control over the WordPress welcome panel using Beaver Builder.
   
   You can personalize the dashboard with content and design built with Beaver Builder. You can add heading, contact information, form, video, images, affiliate links, etc.”
   
   Even though the plugin above is free, Beaver Builder is a commercial plugin!
   
   
4. Divi Dashboard Welcome ($22)
   
   
   “Divi Dashboard Welcome gives you control over the WordPress Dashboard Welcome screen …”
   
   The plugin requires the Divi Page Builder. Both plugins are commercial!

Enjoy
Alex