I’ve combed through the docs and checked here the best I could, but I’m in the need for having a tile basically bring up a modal box to select an option (same way a <select> would work in HTML).
My custom device type has many inputs, but I don’t want to make a tile for each of those inputs and it’d be really slick if I could tap a tile, have UI come up that shows all of the options, tap that option and have the action fired with the value param of the option.
One way to implement this currently is to use a SmartApp to drive your Device.
The SmartApp preferences / configuration UI is somewhat richer than the Device Type (well … not richer … but different?), and can be used to push new Attribute values to the Device.
Appreciate the work around for sure (although I’ll have to do a bunch of digging I think). I do hope that someone developing the apps/tiles catches wind of this message though, because having a multi-modal button seems like something a lot of devices could take advantage of.
Device Type widgets / controls have been pretty much stale since the launch of the platform, with the exception of the new Multi-Attribute Tile.
There’s been talk of allowing embedding of HTML5 / Javascript; but currently “enhanced UI features” are focused in the “Dashboard Solution Modules” (like Smart Home Monitor / SHM), which glue devices and SmartApps together with some API & UI that is not yet published for Community Developers.
Any chance you know of a good example of a smart app that I could look at which has the features you are mentioning? I mean if I don’t have to use the device UI, that’s fine, but from a debugging standpoint I think it’s really fantastic (power toggle, sliders, etc.).
If smart apps can do that and then some, well, I feel like I’ve been wasting precious time 
Can’t think of one off the top of my head, but will see if I can.
The idea to keep in mind is that I think there is value in using both a Device Type and a SmartApp to maximize the functionality. There are functions and UI that are distinct to each, and so you need to creatively combine the two.