Solved: Re: Font Changed Randomly: What is Happening? - Page 2

David_Ames · 10-16-2020 07:41 PM

It seems like every Friday, the AppSheet iOS app does something to mess up my apps. Last Friday, all of a sudden my apps wouldn’t load. I had done nothing different. I didn’t update my iOS software. I didn’t do anything and all of a sudden there was this bug. Thankfully, the great and helpful team at AppSheet finally figured out what was wrong. I had this “other” view in my views page, that was disturbing the loading of my apps. I don’t know why it was doing that all of a sudden, because that “other” view has always been there. When I was told to delete this view from all of my apps, I did so, and that fixed the problem. Now all of my apps load perfectly, the way they did before this strange and random bug just appeared out of nowhere.

NOW, today, this Friday: I opened my app to use it at the gym, like I’ve done every day this week, and every day for the last several years. And the fonts, all of a sudden, got smaller. I could barely read the text on my phone. I did NOTHING in the formatting of the app. It was fine yesterday. Today, I can barely read the text. (This small text appears in the iOS AppSheet app AND the web AppSheet creators’ interface. (Attaching images: Image 1 was before today; Image 2 is from today)

I have tried enlarging the font in the “Options” - “Text Size” in AppSheet creator’s interface. But all that does is make the columns move farther apart. It does NOT increase the tex size in the app.

What is going on? Can anyone help here?

Thank you.

Steve

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David_Ames

Any status update on a fix for this font size/row height/formatting issue?

Thanks.

macastan

Hi David, we’re looking into it… we want to make sure the fix we push does not cause unintended side effects. Please bear with us – will keep you posted

David_Ames

Maria,

Thank you for the status update!

I feel this needs to be said, since you brought it up: The updates that AppSheet made a few weeks ago did indeed cause unintended side effects, namely the font/row size issue I have been talking about for the past 2 weeks.

A month ago, another update caused unintended side effects, namely a font size display change that happened randomly, without my changing anything. The team found a fix for that pretty quickly!

The month before that, another update caused unintended side effects, namely a hanging loading screen where I could not open any of my apps. It was discovered by the team that I had a “Other” view in my views (that had always been there), that was causing the problem. I was told to delete this view in all my apps, and that fixed the issue.

So obviously, unintended side effects have happened in the past. Fortunately, the AppSheet team was able to correct these side effects, so that my apps once again behaved as they have done for years. Until now. So hopefully, the team can find a fix for this as well.

Thank you!

macastan

@David_Ames following up on the status: We have a fix and it should be deployed beginning of next week (we don’t deploy on weekends).

Again, apologies for the impact this had on your apps and I appreciate you all sharing your feedback with us!

We’ll keep sharing the upcoming changes them before shipping them on this thread.

Yayasan_TL_BP

Hai macastan,
Thank you for your information
But, the problem still not solved.I tried to open my apps (bTrip) tonight (21.35) the font size it’s normal, i thought the problem was solved and closed my apps and tried to opened another appss and than back again to open my apps (bTrip) and boom…font size change more big…

Any idea for this problem ?

jcadence

Hi @David_Ames I wanted to quickly pass on that we’re currently working on ways to improve how upcoming changes are communicated as well. We’ve tried a number of different approaches (Feature release notes, newsletter info, etc.) but we haven’t quite nailed down the right approach. We’re actively working on finding a way to better provide the necessary information so that if there is some type of potential impact, we can flag what that might be before hand to help mitigate and/or provide temporary solutions.

This feedback does not go unnoticed, thank you for being so detailed in your posts. I know this is a painful part of the process, we hear you and are actively trying to improve this part of the experience behind the scenes.

Sean_Lim

Yes, echoing all your thoughts on the side effects that have been coming from the recent updates. My expectations for Appsheet is to test these updates on at least some “dummy” apps to ensure that the interfaces are now working, and, if there are any major changes such as the ones in this thread, that they would be communicated to us before rolling out the updates.

macastan

Hi everyone, I wanted to let you know we deployed a change yesterday to tackle the font-size issue. Please let us know if you see anything unexpected.

Apologies for the negative impact these changes had on your apps… please keep sending us your feedback and we will keep posting here the updates to come here.

David_Ames

No change on the font size/row height issue. It is still showing up like in the first screenshot I’ve attached. And it SHOULD be like in the second screenshot I attached.

Thank you.

macastan

Thank you David.

The font-sizes and row-height will still be impacted because it is part of the new Material UI updates, so that is expected. The difference in font-size is now minimal and we also decreased the row height from the previous screenshot in your initial post (around 2px but should be noticeable).

Learning about the importance of these details (ie. row height) will allow us to prioritize as we start putting more effort in features that allow App Creators to customize the app in more ways than what is available today

David_Ames

Thank you for the update. Not good news. Disappointed here.

It would be great if we can, in the future, have control over these things that the update of AppSheet has taken away. Namely, in this instance, the row height and the font size (and remember, this is the 3rd time in as many months that something updated on AppSheet’s end has negatively affected my apps). Before things got screwed up, I had the font size set at 24, and it was fine. Now it is still at 24 and appears smaller (significantly) than it did when it was correct. Now I have to put it up to 28 to match what it looked like before the screw up, and the row height changes along with the font size. Not a good solution. Just FYI.

Updates on the back end of AppSheet shouldn’t have any impact on how the app looks on OUR end. Many hours of creating and implementing on our end…out the window.

Thank you for putting up with my feedback.

Steve

I agree.

David_Ames

Hello. Any updates on fixing the font size/row height issue?

Thanks!

Yayasan_TL_BP

It’s happened again, same time and different device

Please fixed this appsheet

Koichi_Tsuji

I see the same issue as well and reported to support@appsheet.com
I suggest you send mail to them as well to formally register the issue.

Lee_Ray_Sheng

Having issues with my “Group By” Headers, its became like completely different.

Any idea how we can edit the formatting for it… or is it a bug?

Yayasan_TL_BP

It’s same with me

Ratatosk

Same here font suddenly became HUGE in some parts

Vlad_Roman

Same here! On top of that. I have a workflow with 3 email actions. The 3rd action is sending the email twice. Same thing with a report. Sending same email twice.

Steve

This is an entirely different issue. Please contact support@appsheet.com for help with this.

1minManager

Huge fonts for me too this morning

QuickApp

Same issue for me. What´s wired is that only some of my APPs are impacted.

Koichi_Tsuji

This is known issue now.

Bahbus

Some of these complaints are valid, and some are not.

Any changes regarding AppSheet updating to Material UI for the most part are not valid. Material UI is Google’s design guide for how Apps should look (regardless of what you want as the consumer). AppSheet is now owned by Google, so they can’t revert or change things that would actively DEFY the Material design. Some things within the Material design have some leeway and those are the valid complaints/suggestions/tweaks/etc. Straight brokenness (aka a bug) is a valid complaint. Don’t like the base concept of the Material design? Too bad. It’s Google’s design. It will change again in the future (but hopefully not near future). If you can’t roll with it, then app development is not for you at all.

If you want full control over everything, learn to code an app from scratch.

This isn’t meant to sound mean or crass or anything. It’s just the simple fact that some people’s complaints aren’t valid, but they just don’t realize or understand. Heck there are people who would make the whole interface puke green and royal purple because they’re that person’s favorite colors - and it shouldn’t be allowed, because not only is it a terrible and ugly combination, but directly against the design docs.

While I generally agree with this sentiment, a full UI overhaul to the Material design has to impact us. Sometimes negatively because of the way we had to set up something with the old UI. If you programmed your own entire app from scratch you wouldn’t have to worry about it. But you are using a middleman service, and that middleman service is now owned by the company that sets the design reqs. Therefore, changes will happen, and (again outside of legit bugs) you gotta kinda roll with it - retweak.

It wouldn’t make any sense for AppSheet to attempt to maintain two completely separate UI designs for “old apps” vs “new apps”.

Koichi_Tsuji

It is making sense that appsheet UI is getting to Material UI , but you must realize the complain is coming from the current UI is not like Material UI. Ie not user friendly. Techinically it could be that. Appsheet is on the Material CSS framework but it does not look like tat. Anyway I personally don’t care what sort of CSS framework the appsheet stands on but most importantly it must be intuitive and user friendly. For now, appsheet is lot like it.

Bahbus

No, I absolutely agree. It’s not every complaint. And some are valid because we don’t know when the certain changes are happening, or what exactly some of the upcoming changes may mean. And a heavy majority of it is bugs brought about because of the changes. But every now and again, the complaint should be aimed at Google, and people just don’t realize it.

Like the lady yelling at a manager of a store for a corporate policy that the manager can’t change or override in any way.

Grant_Stead

Agreed.
I actually think that part of the benefit of using a service like Appsheet is the future proofing. Not only from a tech perspective, but from a UI perspective as well. So, in my opinion, I’m actually paying for this thing to be upgraded, not static. With that, sometimes fringe things get stepped on… (Bummer of course, creates rework, etc… But it’s way less overhead then if you rolled your own native coded app.)

Mariano_Sanz_Gi

It just appeared in one of my apps. Different font sizes in dashboard panel groups.

Steve

macastan

Fix should be in now.

David_Ames

Are you talking about the font size/row height issue? Is so, nothing has changed.

As a matter of fact, it made something else get screwed up. Look at the bottom row of icons in the first screenshot (active tab is invisible), as compared to the second screenshot. The second screenshot is from when everything was as it should be: font size/row height/bottom row icons not disappearing.

Reminder: I did not do anything, and this stuff happened.

What is happening??

macastan

David, I will look into the active tab issue – thank you for pointing that out.

The fix that went out yesterday was for Grouped Header’s font-size. For the row height/font-size you’re mentioning, that is the expected outcome, as part of the Material refresh.

David_Ames

Has there been any progress on the ‘active tab disappearing’ issue that was brought up in December? My apps are still broken as far as the ‘active tab’ highlighting is concerned. (See screenshots in my post above.)

And I can’t find any setting in the UX/formatting area to change this.

(And remember, I did not do anything to make this happened. It just happened one day after an AppSheet update.)

Thank you.

macastan

Hi David, apologies about that, I thought we had put in a fix for it back in the day. I guess not all configurations got the fix

Can you contact support@appsheet.com with this issue and your app name so it can be looked at?

QuickApp

Thanks Google for the prompt fix.
I confirm that the problem looks to be fixed.