March 13, 2024

lizlynch · March 13, 2024

Deployment Time: 2:00 PM PST

Features & enhancements

*Item*	*Description*
Enhancement	The following enhancements have been made to the Expression Assistant: You can now accept autocompletions with the Tab key. Additional keyboard shortcuts are now supported. See Keyboard shortcuts.
Enhancement	In the AppSheet app editor, when selecting multiple tabs from Google Sheet when adding a table to an app, the number of selected tabs is now displayed. For example: This comes in handy if you decide to filter the tabs displayed. For example:

Bug fixes

*Item*	*Description*
Bug	For desktop UI (preview), add tooltip to all icon buttons in the sub nav bar.

Rollout changes

None

Preview announcements

Preview feature releases enable you to try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. See Product launch stages.

No new preview features were released today.

The following tables summarize the preview features that are currently available.

Item

Description

Feature

AppSheet apps for desktop users (Preview)

The new desktop design, currently in preview, is optimized for desktop browsers, presenting a more complete view of information with a consistent organization and structure. The new desktop design lets users navigate their apps more easily and access information in context, and provides an efficient way to edit existing records without losing context. The legacy desktop design, enabled by default, provides an experience similar to the mobile and tablet device.

For more information, see:

In addition, the AppSheet preview program lets app creators try out new app features that are not yet fully supported. For more details and to opt-in, see AppSheet preview program.

Karimmc2 · 03-13-2024 03:39 PM

Finally Indentation!! I would have personally preferred tabs but thanks 👏🏻

Marc_Dillon · 03-15-2024 10:33 AM

Love the extra additions to expression assistant. I've discovered one annoyance today, I keep hitting the escape key thinking it'll just back me out of the autocomplete menu but it instead closes the entire expression assistant and I lose any of the expression that I've been working on.

This bit me like 5 times in a row just now so I was wondering why I had that instinct so ingrained. I went exploring other systems. In both App Scripts and GSheet, escape key simply closes the autocomplete menu but nothing else. Hitting escape again in GSheets exits out of the formula editor.

I hope you can add this intermediate escape to expression assistant to avoid losing our work in these cases!

takuya_miyai · 03-15-2024 02:31 PM

I'm really glad that the Tab key completes it.😀
I used to have trouble moving to the DataExplorer or Example section.

Marc_Dillon · 03-19-2024 09:45 AM

@lizlynch , just wanted to make sure you saw my previous reply, as this issue continues to disrupt me over and over again.

Karimmc2 · 03-19-2024 09:49 AM

I don't know if I haven't got the update yet but what I'm getting is that now we have 2 ways to autocomplete (tab and enter) and no way to do indentation, at least on Mac, as the current shortcut for indentation triggers page change in Chrome. Such a bad UX.👎

lizlynch · 03-19-2024 09:50 AM

@Marc_Dillon Yes! I did pass this on to the AppSheet dev team. I believe it's on the radar, but there isn't a definitive timeframe for when it will be resolved. Thank you for raising this and apologies for the inconvenience the issue is causing.

Marc_Dillon · 03-19-2024 09:51 AM

@Karimmc2 wrote:

no way to do indentation, at least on Mac, as the current shortcut for indentation triggers page change in Chrome

You probably need to edit your chrome shortcuts to avoid this. I use Firefox mostly, and I had to disable its ctrl-shift-s shortcut in order to use that for expression assistant save on the Appsheet editor.

Karimmc2 · 03-19-2024 09:56 AM

Thanks @Marc_Dillon I did this but I'm still unable to do indentantion, I guess I just haven't got the update yet

wabrian · 03-19-2024 10:19 AM

Thanks for the feedback. I will try to fix the Escape key being handled by modal close' in the coming weeks, which will also allow us to use Tab for indentation (Esc-Tab allowing you to keyboard navigate the expression modal).

wabrian · 03-19-2024 11:08 PM

@Karimmc2 I tested on a Mac and indentation worked fine. I had to click inside the textbox to not trigger page change. If I had not clicked inside the textbox, the page forward and page backward behavior was triggered.

The updates are released to everyone.

Karimmc2 · 03-20-2024 10:57 AM

Hi! @wabrian Thanks. I switched to safari and both ⌘-[ and⌘-] worked fine. Using Chrome it is still not working on Mac. I tried it on iPad and same thing, works on Safari but not on Chrome. I still haven't found a way to disable the default shortcuts on Chrome to see if that way it would work.

Karimmc2 · 03-21-2024 10:38 AM

Why not just leave enter for autoselect and tab for indentation?

I don't understand what has been the issue with indentation since the begining of the new text editor.

wabrian

@Karimmc2 Tab is used for accessibility of navigating the page.
Tab can be used for autocomplete because it goes away after one click, at which point tab can once again be used for navigating the page.

In order to use tab for indentation, we need an escape hatch, so it is not trivial to implement. We would like to, but are not prioritizing it at this time.