Exploration: Dashboards links panel as “native” navigation

[miguel-sanchez-elastic]

Description

The current Links panel follows standard panel styling (borders, background, and padding). While functional, it does not visually represent a native navigation system, such as a "Tabs" or "Pages" UI. This exploration ticket aims to define how we can allow creators to transform this panel into a seamless navigation header

Inspiration:

Potential options

• a) Explicit style Settings: provide manual controls to override the default panel "chrome". Examples: “Borderless mode”: a toggle to remove the panel border and shadow or "Tabs navigation" preset: a specific styling mode that removes the outer border and applies a bottom border to mimic a tabbed interface
• b) Smart defaults: automatically adjust the styling based on the panel's position. If the panel is placed at the top of the dashboard (e.g., row 1) it could default to a "Tabs navigation" style. Note: potential for user confusion if the styling changes automatically without an obvious reason
• c) Native pages: instead of using a panel on the grid, treat "Pages" as a core dashboard property. Note: While this is a robust solution, it is high-effort. We should also consider that users may still prefer the current "Links panel" approach to consolidate multiple independent dashboards into one navigation view
• d) Others?

Acceptance criteria

TBD

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-presentation (Team:Presentation)

[teresaalvarezsoler]

@miguel-sanchez-elastic we added the possibility of removing the panel borders, is that enough for this issue? #250675

[miguel-sanchez-elastic]

Thanks @teresaalvarezsoler , it looks better but I have a doubt, is there a reason why the border appears on hover?

(Open in full screen as the borders are barely visible)

I'd say ideally the border is not shown either on hover but it is barely visible.

Cc @nicolasprouvost-ux

[teresaalvarezsoler]

I think the reason why it shows border when hovering is because of the actions appearing on top right corner. But we should remove these actions in view mode and remove the border when hovering because:

• Maximize action doesn't make sense for the links panel
• Copy to dashboard can be performed in Edit mode

In that case, for panels with actions in view mode we will show the border when hovering and panels without actions we won't show it. Wdyt @andreadelrio?