As of version 1.8.2, widgets on the dashboard have three buttons minimize, maximize and close.
I suggest a fourth button be added. It would implement a "reload this widget" function.
There are several reasons why I am suggesting this additional button be added.
First, I've had times when the page loads but some widgets fail to load (see attached screenshot showing widgets that have failed to load after more than ten minutes).
Second, the "last visits graph" doesn't refresh when we cross the new day boundary. From one day to the next, all it would take to update this widget would be a click on the Reload button.
Of course, one could always reload the page but it feels overkill. Until recently, I was temporarily in a place where the Internet connection was really slow reloading the whole page took quite some time, which I thought was a shame since I only wanted to refresh that specific widget.
Keywords: widget reload button
Attachment: Screenshot of widgets that have failed to load after 10+ min
MWSnap 2012-07-30, 15_38_34 - Piwik Never loading widgets.png
(In [6703]) fixes #3293 add possibility to refresh a single dashboard widget
Nice change!
I think this feature is useful, but it shouldn't be too visible because it won't be very often used.
(In [6714]) Refs #3293 Do not display loading icon when loading N widgets on dashboard (would be OK displaying it when reloading one widget only though)
(In [6716]) refs #3293 do display loading (icon) only when reloading widget
@matt: please feel free to replace the reload icon. I didn't have a better one...