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Hey everyone,
Weโre excited to announce we are now previewing our new visual design for applications that are accessed on desktop browsers.
Currently, your AppSheet applications tend to follow mobile design patterns even when your users have large screens and these patterns can be confusing to desktop users. The new design lets these desktop users navigate their apps more easily and access information in context, and provides an efficient way to create and update records without losing context. App creators can also present more information by leveraging the larger screens but still keep it organized.
Here are some before and after images that better illustrate the design changes.
Legacy Design - Screenshot #1: Sifting through a collection of records grouped by City and State after selecting a State (Deck View)
Legacy Design - Screenshot #2: Looking at a specific record after selecting that record in the screen above (Detail View)
Legacy Design - Screenshot #3: Editing an existing record/Creating a new record (Form View)
New Design - Screenshot #1: Seeing your data in context (Deck View + Detail View)
New Design - Screenshot #2: Focusing on a specific record (Detail View)
New Design - Screenshot #3: Editing in place an existing record
New Design - Screenshot #4: Creating a new record (Form View)
Whatโs next? Well, this is still a work in progress. Weโve been gathering feedback from a number of design partners, including some of you in the AppSheet Community, and we know there is more to do before it can properly support all of your applications. At this stage, we feel that it would be good to let you play with the new design and to give you an opportunity to share your feedback - what you like, what doesn't work, what you think could use some improvements. This represents a significant change and your feedback will help us guide our next steps.
As this feature is in Preview, you may see visual changes in your apps as we work to improve the new desktop design in real-time. We don't recommend using the new desktop design in your production apps.
Thank you
The AppSheet Team
FAQ
How do I get access to this new desktop design?
We are currently slowly ramping this new experience over the next week or so, so you may not see this option in the editor immediately.
For each application, you can opt-in to use the new desktop design. You can toggle between the new and legacy desktop modes, as desired.
Follow these steps to enable the new design in your app:
- Open the app in the app editor
- Navigate to the UX > Options pane
- Enable the Desktop mode (Preview) option - see screenshot below
- Save the app in the Editor
All users of this application that access the app on a desktop browser will then see the new design after their next sync.
How do I configure the design of my app? I donโt see any new settings in the Editor!
There are minimal changes to the Editor for now. Mostly, the same settings are leveraged to specify the desktop and mobile designs. Let me give you an example.
Your apps have โprimary viewsโ and โmenu viewsโ. With the new desktop design, all of your views will be accessible from a side menu. That menu will list first the โprimary viewsโ and then the โsecondary viewsโ. In the future, we will adjust the configuration settings and in particular the language so that it makes sense for both mobile and desktop apps. For example, position values of "left most" and "right most" don't make sense for the new desktop design with its vertical menu structure.
Weโll be giving app creators more controls over some features that are currently set by default.
Is there some documentation or more information on what changed?
See Optimize the user experience using the new desktop design (Preview). Weโll update it over time.
Is there a list of functionalities that are known to not work with the new design?
Yes.
First, here is a list [as of July 31st] of (high-level) issues and requests that were reported to us and that still need fixes or assessments. Some of them are independent of the desktop mode, but we're still listing them here since people may want to know about them and so they don't need to report them unless it was reported for different app configurations :
| General theme | Issues |
| Form View |
|
| Navigation expressions: LINKTOROW(), LINKTOFORM(), etc |
|
| Format rules |
|
| Detail View UI |
- In some configurations, showing the wrong display names in a Detail tab - Edit-in-place in Dashboard view - Sync gets the app user out of Editing mode in a Detail View |
| General UI |
- Improvement requests on the subnav bar (e.g. larger text button, better responsiveness w.r.t. title, actions, text) - Clicking in grey area around onboarding view should not navigate the app in the background - Filtering on Dashboard - Tooltip for icon action buttons - Chart Views do not behave like other views |
| Localization of strings | Some strings are missing |
| CSV import/export |
|
| Other app functionalities |
- Missing Share, Feedback buttons - App Gallery behaving differently - Support of Amazon Cognito (missing account icon) - OCR not working on Desktop |
| Functionalities for app creators | โPreview asโ is not available for the desktop emulator |
Second, here is a list of some issues and feature requests that we know we are not going to tackle, at least for now.
| Supporting multiple navigation actions in a grouped action |
This is not something that we support. The team very intentionally did not want to support this. App creators should not rely on it and it wonโt work in desktop mode. |
| Multiple requests to improve the Table View UI |
We got requests to improve the Table View in general. The requests are valid, but that is out of scope for desktop mode. Changes we would be making would also impact the legacy UI and mobile apps. |
| LINKTOPARENTVIEW() not supported | For desktop users, there are better options to navigate back: the browserโs back button and the breadcrumbs. |
| Font size changes (via app settings) lead to layout issues | Generally, we recommend using the browserโs zoom which does a better job at resizing the app. |
| Background image |
See also Limitations and known issues.
How do I provide feedback?
Please share your feedback in this thread below this message!
I am spending some time making my App look pretty and have discovered an unexpected way that appsheet deals with format rules on [Related whatevers...]
Here is a picture of an inline list on a detail view.
It's nice, but I wanted to make it stand out a little more as there are a number of inline views on this detail page. So I decided to create a format rule to add an icon with green text and make the icon a little bigger.
Results below
It seems the display rule places the icon on the next line rather than at the start of the fieldname.
It's a small issue in the scheme of things, but it would be lovely for pretty apps if the icon could display in the same vein it does with normal fields.
Thank you.
I can't delete item in related_form in parent_form. If i click add new after that i click cancel, new record with blank data will appear
@Bulubulu wrote:
Is it possible to use the "Preview App As" feature in this mode, to test the app as a different user ?
I assume by "this mode", you are referring to the Desktop Mode Preview.
It doesn't appear so. When the Desktop Mode Preview is ON, the Emulator does show a new icon to launch into the Desktop preview. See image.
The only difference I see between launching Desktop and the icon on the far right which launches app into a browser tab (i.e. Desktop) is that the former has an extra banner added clearly indicating it is a preview of the app.
It is reasonable to expect that launching with the Desktop icon would also apply the "Preview app as" user... but, it doesn't. Hopefully this is in the plans to be added. It definitely will be needed to test/debug different permissioning on users using the Desktop.
New Desktop icon shown when Desktop Mode Preview is enabled
Hi Peter,
It is still not working 100%.
I have a contacts table, when I choose a contact to see their info, the app goes to the first ever record. Still doing this.
I'll share some screenshots:
This is the table of contacts.
So, when I click to go to the details the app goes for the right one for a fraction of second, then goes to the first record of the Database.
Note: The detail view is a Dashboard view with 2 detail views aligned. And I think this is the problem, the dashboard view.
Why this is my guess?
When I go to the detail view, even if it is showing the first record of the database, I click to maximize the detail view, then it goes to the right record.
I'll show it:
This is the contact details view (dashboard view), this is the first record of the database, it starts with the letter "A". So when I click the arrow button on the upper right corner it maximizes the detail view and it goes to the right record, the one I clicked and wanted to see (starting with letter "B").
So I guess the dashboard view is not working properly at this time yet.
If the explanation is not clear enough, let me know, please.
Thank you for your work.
I'm looking forward to deploy an app this year, I hope the desktop view would be ready by then. hehehe
Anyway, thank you!
Hello, it seems like the option of giving Feedback works fine in mobile. However, when I go on desktop (preview) mode, I can't find the button in the menu. In the example bellow, I renamed Feedback "Demande support"
This is the menu when using mobile mode :
This is the menu using Desktop mode :
Thank you in advance for your help !
Kenza
Possible Bug found
Situation:
If you have a custom action triggered on Form Saved, and that Form is launched by an Edit button.
Issue:
If the Edit action button is set to "Edit in Place"
Then you will not be able to save any changes at all.
If you switch it back to "Open a form", it will resume working.
There are some bugs for desktop mode:
Problem#1: When you can tried add a new row for parent table or edit form of parent row, after that you add a new form for childtable and cancel without save, a new blank row be auto-added in the inline table so you can not save the parent form.
I have tried this with mobile view and old desktop mode but this bug doesn't appear.
Please recheck and fix this bug asap.
Thanks
Hien Nguyen
Stumbled across a bug with the "App Gallery" functionality specifically in Desktop Mode.
In our other apps not in Desktop Mode, the "App Gallery" functions like so, and navigates to a specific app we have set up for our users.
However, in Desktop Mode that customization is gone and only shows the "App Gallery", which would take the user to their respective AppSheet "App Gallery", which we don't want or may not even work for them.
The only difference between between the two screenshots is the Desktop Preview being toggled off and on, respectively. Has anyone else seen something similar, or am I missing something?
