New Bug Encountered: Editing the image column results in column type changing back to text

[Mike_A]

I noticed if I edit the appformula in an image column (which contains SVG code) and then Save, the column type changes to TEXT. This means before I try and sync, I need to remember to change the column type back to Image before I sync the app. Can be very annoying… obviously, I keep forgetting this, but it means two steps each time.

[Aleksi]

Yes this is unfortunately true at this moment with some column types.

[Mike_A]

Thanks @Aleksi. Funny thing is, you would think I would learn to check this before sync … nope!

[Aleksi]

Let me check if we could do something with this.

[Mike_A]

Thanks would be helpful (and may reduce confusion for other users - I finally learned my lesson!).

[Aleksi]

This seems to be a bug. We will fix this as soon as possible.

[Mike_A]

Thanks! I thought I was going crazy

[nico]

Mike, thanks for your report! I created a change that will go out tomorrow afternoon that should address this frustration.

In the meantime, I will provide an explanation: we try to be smart by inferring the type based on the formula, for example a formula with text will automatically assume it is of type “TEXT” and change the column type but in cases like these, we should just keep the same column because you know better than our assumption!

[Mike_A]

Thanks for the update and effort Nico! It’s a tricky thing to design software that makes the user experience easier… but assuming the user intention can be very complicated. I fully understand the tradeoffs and really appreciate all the effort!!

[Mike_A]

@nico - now that I think about it, this is another good reason for a specific column type for SVG (or more broadly HTML) as we discussed in this post: Dynamic SVG graphics

[nico · Accepted solution]

The column change should be live now but let me know if you run into the issue again.

As for the SVG type suggestion, I personally found what Jonathan and you did really clever and I could see lots of potential applications, such as custom graphs, progress bars, animations etc. My thoughts are that it would be fairly limited to power-users like you two unless we also find a way to simplify the creation process (even if it’s just pointing to a 3rd party SVG creator like this) and integrate better with our views. I could see adding an SVG/HTML type as a good step because messing with long strings is overly challenging but we’ll also have to work through these other challenges before it’s ready for broader use.

[Mike_A]

Thanks for the effort nico. I kind of feel bad losing the auto field type detect just for this special case. I agree the SVG complexity is a barrier to use, but I realize that an “html” column type, that helped eliminating need for special handling of quotes, hashes, etc, might still be very useable for static and animated SVG’s or Html. I guess I am trying to say that basic users may still be easily able to get simple html and/or SVG’s and could take advantage. To get really dynamic SVG’s takes a lot more work and not what “no-code” is aligned with. I think there is a place for basic Html in any case. Thanks for all your efforts!

By the way, we have some great examples of dynamic progress bars and quadrant charts — thanks for the collaboration @Jonathon!