You assume that all the things you want to do are totally normal and should be possible for the average user… But you want 30 separate dashboards with a uniform main-menu that can be edited in a single instance. That “Main Menu” needs to highlight the current dashboard while also showing multiple submenu’s. Plus if the main-menu shows a sub-menu it still needs to highlight the current dashboard and close any other sub-menus when clicked.
Well yeah… That makes things a bit complicated. 
Do not get me wrong because I love what you are trying to do and I totally get the vision. In fact I consider you the Ultimate Master Beta Tester since even I cannot come up with all the things you try to integrate into a dashboard. But giving more than one purpose to a control makes things tricky. It can be done and I would not say you are using widgets for things they were not designed for because the core principle is the freedom of linking everything together however you like. But let’s be honest, you are stepping outside the boundaries where a normal user swims and you are entering the “Advanced Pro User” zone.
The menu system is designed to be a simple menu where you have a lot of options to style it exactly how you want. I do not think it is too complex. You just add a menu-item and configure it just like a button.
With the dropdown menu it gets a little more involved. I wanted the menu to be able to pop out of a basic button (or other element that activates it) so the menu has to react to a button press. But the button also has to react and turn off again when a menu collapses on its own like when an item is clicked. So the “Output Topic” from a button has to be connected to the “Trigger Activation Topic” of the menu and the “Output Status Topic” of the menu has to be connected to the “State” of the button to let it know to deactivate.
So far that is not really complicated. Just two things that need to be connected.
You can do the same with menu-items to create a submenu out of a menu. A menu-item acts just like a button and has the same options. But this gets one little step more complicated. When another main-menu item is clicked it should collapse the sub-menu. This is done by making each main-menu item a member of a “Radio Group” so only one item can be active at the same time. You also need to activate “Allow empty selection” so you can have nothing selected and “Send Off When Turned Off by Group” to let the other menu-items retract their sub-menus.
Yes that is a bit more involved but still understandable.
You had main-menu-items configured as “Go to page” and in that case the menu-item or button automatically sets its state to on if it is on the correct page. With “Go to page” the button cannot be a member of a “Selection Group”. This is because the on or off state is controlled by the current page and you cannot have it controlled by another button at the same time. Otherwise this would create a massive paradox and collapse the complete space time continuum. 
To be able to set the page and be controlled by other buttons you have to create a manual solution. I do not think it is too complicated if you solve everything step by step and you understand the software. But I also do not think a lot of users are going this far to achieve something. The good thing is that it is possible. The bad thing is that you have to find some more hands on solutions.
You mentioned “Wizards” a couple or times, but there are no “Wizards” in Dashboard Studio right now. A wizard is a dialog that leads the user and lets them choose options step by step. I have thought about creating a “Connect to button” feature inside the menu system where a real wizard dialog pops up to ask which Button it should connect to and then sets the Topic linking automatically. Maybe I will add that later but I also think that when users learn how to create the raw Topic connections they get a better understanding of how Dashboard Studio works overall.
Anyhow I agree it gets a bit complicated when you go this deep but there are not many users who venture this far. If they do I am happy to help and find solutions. I think good step by step tutorials would give a better understanding of how to do things. I try to keep the help file updated but I want to rewrite many parts to make everything much clearer. When the wave of requests and fixes is over I shall take the time to make the widgets more logical to configure and improve the help file. If you have any solid or well defined ideas on how to improve it please let me know. I am not saying I will use all of them but I always try to implement the solutions you guys (or girls though I have not seen any pink dashboards over here yet 
) want.
, so I didn’t reported it. You have to tab out or first select another field in the same widget, before selecting another widget, else your field change is done in the other selected widget. I mostly do a TAB - out to prefent this, but I also forget this sometimes.
