Love the new emulator look! But its missing some very useful functionality. Are they elsewhere?

[WillowMobileSys]

I love the new emulator look and function. It should stay. But I no longer see some very useful features - Sync time, Analyze and the ability to rotate the view.

Can someone from AppSheet comment if these features will be available again and if so when?

I’m in the middle of load testing. The Sync time and Analyze feature were useful.

[TDhers]

@morgan Can you comment on John’s question above please?

[morgan]

Hey @WillowMobileSystems, thanks for the great questions! I’m glad you like the new emulator design. It’s always hard to make changes without causing some disruption, so thanks for bearing with us as we improve the experience.

For the performance testing, it is still possible to get a detailed performance profile by going to the Manage->Monitor tab. One of our goals to put related functionality all together in one single place, rather than scattering it across multiple locations in the editor.

I’d love to have a more detailed conversation about your goals when it comes to load testing. That could help us in the future with improvements to performance profiling, and other functionality we might include. I’ll plan to follow up with you to get more details.

As for rotating the view, we observed that the majority of people needed to quickly view their app in narrow and wide layouts, but not so much rotated layouts. Again, I’d love to follow up to hear more about your goals when previewing the app so that I can make further improvements.

I’ll plan to follow up with you. If anyone else is interested in providing more feedback about these features, also please message me and I’ll set up something.

Thanks!
Morgan

[LeventK]

@morgan
I do understand gathering functionalities under definite groups however I strongly agree with everyone that having the shortcuts to the data and the UX view besides the sync time is much more efficient than going somewhere else in the editor and running a performance profile now and then. Also it’s much more efficient to see the name of the view when writing expressions or provided you have lost your vision and couldn’t realize which UX view you are looking at. Please bring them back to the emulator.

[Fabian_Weller]

Shortcuts to the View Name and the Table are still there @LeventK. You will find them at the button of your screen.
@morgan I agree: Sync Time is very important also to me. Please bring it back to the emulator.

[LeventK]

@Fabian
Thanks mate, I also noticed that after I have posted.

[David_Joyce]

@Fabian I looked and the View and Table name are not there! Is there some setting to make them appear again? Thank you.

[Fabian_Weller]

Hi @David_Joyce it should look like this. Please see at the bottom.
Is it different to you?

[WillowMobileSys]

Thanks @morgan, I can now get to the information I need.

I think the only thing that might be extremely helpful is to bring back the Sync Time value (and of course the link to the profile).

I have cases where I may be making many changes to the data sheets and then come back to the emulator and tap Sync. I may go through several cycles of these changes. Rather than sitting and twiddling my thumbs waiting for the sync to complete, I would flip tabs to take care of some other task. It would be nice to come back to the emulator and be able to glance at the Sync Time to confirm no major performance increase.

The alternative is to tap-tap-tap-wait to get at the performance info under the Manage function. This becomes very counter productive if I am checking this information frequently.

I would like to see the Sync Time + link brought back to the emulator.

[Kirk_Masden]

morgan:

One of our goals to put related functionality all together in one single place, rather than scattering it across multiple locations in the editor.

Hi @morgan! I’m glad that @WillowMobileSystems initiated this important discussion. Please note that the closest tag he could choose for the discussion was “UX.” That’s because there is no tag for discussion of the editing interface. I hope you or someone else at AppSheet can add such a tag to facilitate discussion of the editing environment. Thanks in advance.

P.S. Here are some links to other editing interface issues that either I have posted about or that someone else has posted and I’ve taken an interest in recently:

Old bug encountered AGAIN: Column type changed by editor / Editing interface issues Questions

This is an old issue that I really wish AppSheet would address: Recently, I’ve been bothered by a DateTime virtual column that keeps getting changed to a ChangeTimestamp column type: [32] There is no conceivable situation in which this would help a user because ChangeTimestamp columns have to be “real,” don’t they? I can understand the AppSheet interface automatically assigning a column type when one has not been assigned yet by the app developer but why must the interface keep changing…

Editor Save Button Questions

@JCadence Quick question, when this change will be rolled out to the platform? I refreshed editor but still not being rolled out. Anyway, this is great change to make process far more easier and productive. https://help.appsheet.com/en/articles/3544636-editor-save-button

Ability to Rearrange the Table and Slices Order in the Data Tab Feature Requests

I think this is long overdue. I’d also like to add that we don’t have an “App editing interface” category in which to post. This post has the “data” tag, which is fine, but it seems to me that it’s primarily about the interface. I think that improving the our work environment (that is, the editing interface) is also very important and so deserves its own category within this forum. By the way, I recently posted about another aspect of the editing interface that I hope can be improved:

Better search capabilities within the AppSheet editing interface Feature Requests

As AppSheet has grown, it has become possible to develop apps in which columns, actions, and expressions interact in increasingly complex ways. The ability to build more complex apps is great but it can be very difficult to figure out what is connected to what when one returns to an app after some time has passed. We can use our browser’s search function in some contexts to solve such puzzles but the current search function is extremely limited. So, here’s my proposal: Add the capability to …

Does a row description really need to get evaluated like an expression? Questions

It seems that I’m not alone in wishing for a simple spot to type in notes.

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t include the following:

FREE Chrome Extension that enhances the Expression Assistant [AppSheet Toolbox/QREW Tools] Tips & Tricks 💡

Hi AppSheet Community As someone who is in the App Editor 24/7, I frequently catch myself trying to remember the syntax for a particular expression, re-reading a formula several times to figure out where my missing parentheses are, or searching my mind for some fancy formula I put together ages ago. I know many of you have experienced the same. To make life a little easier on our favorite app making platform, the QREW Technologies team has released the first version of a Chrome Extension, QR…

Sorry for the overkill but I hope we can all agree that “editing interface” or “app editor” or whatever it should be called is an important topic and deserves its own tag. Thanks for reading this far.

[Sergio_Sa]

Hey @WillowMobileSystems if that helps, as work around you can still see rotation with
https://www.appsheet.com/Template/mobilepreview?appId= xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

Not the best solution but …

[WillowMobileSys]

Thanks! But I imagine as clean-up happens, that page will get swept up and removed.

[WillowMobileSys]

Sergio_Sa:

Hey @WillowMobileSystems if that helps, as work around you can still see rotation with
https://www.appsheet.com/Template/mobilepreview?appId= xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

Not the best solution but …

Ah-ha. @Aleksi to the rescue again! As he points out in the post below the Mobile preview and rotate options are actually still available from the the MyApps screen. Simply dropdown the menu and select the Preview option for the app you wish to preview.

Thought I would post that answer here for completeness!!

App Preview Questions

You can open the mobile preview from My Apps page if you click the “Preview” instead of “Edit”.

[Kirk_Masden]

By the way, since this discussion began, the #editor tag has become available. It might be good to add it to the initial post:

https://community.appsheet.com/tags

[WillowMobileSys]

Hmm, I don’t seem to be able to edit the post.

[Kirk_Masden]

I’ve noticed that after a certain amount of time we see to lose the ability to edit. Perhaps that’s what happened here.