Number and order of overlay actions

[Aurelien]

Hi awesome Community Members,

At trying to implement this:

Show Hide (Toggle) Icon Overlay Tips & Tricks 💡

This toggle “operation” is actually adding/deleting rows with useremail value as child table, but actuall we dont need to interact with backend data base, and could stay as operation on Client (browser) only, like Matt previously highlighted in this FeatureRequest of Those change in table to add / delete are only happens to client side, not being pushed to backend, which will eliminate the unnecesary sync ops which makes App runs faster.

explained as well here:

Pile of overlay actions Questions

One additional column and two actions. Add one Yes/No column called say [Display Overlay] Add two overlay actions called say “Show Overlay” and “Hide Overlay” of type “Set the values of some columns in this row” with [Display Overlay]=TRUE for one and [Display Overlay]=FALSE Condition for these actions is reverse, [Display Overlay]=FALSE and [Display Overlay]=TRUE so they show alternatively. For all other overlay actions have the additional condition as [Display Overlay]=TRUE with o…

I ran into something, I don’t know if that’s a bug or a limitation: I can only display 4 overlay actions at the same time.
Moreover, the order of the action buttons seems to be shaken if so.
Do you know if this is intended ?

In my example below, I just changed the prominence of the Edit action.

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Hi @Aurelien ,

A quick testing shows below observations.

1. Yes , the maximum count of overlay actions being displayed in detail view seems to be 4.
   Maybe one more logic could be used in the “Show/ Hide Overlay” actions to show A) the First bunch of actions B) the second bunch of actions C) hide all the overlay actions. But this could be a bit confusing to the app users.

2. Yes, the order gets disturbed when one changes action prominence. But once the set of actions is finalized to display in overlay, one could set the desired display order through “Rearranging actions” options.

[Aurelien]

Hi @Suvrutt_Gurjar

Thank you for confirming this behavior.

1. I totally agree with you on point 1, I thought the same thing : the simpler, the better.
2. About point 2, I made some stuff with rearranging actions order, and some logic has to be kept in mind: the laster it is set, the upper it is displayed.
   …with a picture it’s best:
   
   So, that is when sticking to 4 actions displayed.

Better than nothing, I would say, although it’s a little frustrating not being able to go beyond. I assume this is intended, for UX consistency purpose or so.
I’m curious to see if someone from AppSheet team will give us some information about the reason to it. Maybe some standard on screen size for mobile view…?

3. Now, when it comes to 5 items set prominently but 4 displayed only, then the rearranging order seems ignored. Here is a comparison, seems erratic.
   
   

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Thank you @Aurelien for your detailed observations.

Aurelien:

I assume this is intended, for UX consistency purpose or so.

I agree with you. Displaying a very long list of overlay actions may not be user-friendly and a good UX principle.

Aurelien:

Now, when it comes to 5 items set prominently but 4 displayed only , then the rearranging order seems ignored. Here is a comparison, seems erratic.

Oh okay. That is good to know. The use case for many overlay actions and that too in a specific order may be less. So this edge test case may not be working.

Anyway, it seems to be a good UX approach to restrict overlay actions to 4 , especially in mobile view.

[Aurelien]

Suvrutt_Gurjar:

especially in mobile view

You are highlighting a very good point, as my users in this case will be only working on computers, i.e browser with a bigger view size.

I just gave it a try with 5 items on prominence, and browser navigation: still 4 actions displayed. I had a hope !