Some visual changes to deck view

We’ve got a couple of changes rolling out for deck view. These are visual changes, plus one change in how we render a data type when set as a header (latLong).

1. Increased type contrast

  • We’ve given the primary header a medium font weight, and reduced the secondary header by the equivalent of 1px. This gives a little more distinction between primary and secondary text.

2. Summary column width

  • We’ve widened the column a tiny bit, and reduced the font size by 1px. This should allow the display of a standard date or timestamp format when the app is using the base (default) font size of 18.
  • If you’re using the progress data type for the summary column, the harvey balls (progress circles) have been reduced by a few pixels, allowing them a little more breathing room from text that runs below them.

3. Email rendering bug: removed a break in email address when used in the summary column. Breaking to 2 lines was overlapping with secondary header text.

4. latLong display in deck view, when set as a header

  • We’re looking at rendering latLong as coordinates for headers. Currently, the map chunk that gets rendered seems too small to be visually distinguished from the other rows, and is awkwardly placed behind the actions on mobile. One of the keys of deck view is visible actions per row, and this doesn’t play as well with that.

We’d rather you can see the lat / long coordinates as legible text in this form factor.

Anyone have examples where they’re using latLong maps embedded in deck rows?

  • Let us know the context and the use case for a map in the deck view row, if you have one, and what problem it’s trying to solve.

Those are the changes, and wanted to give everyone a heads up.


Information wanted: use of Deck views on desktop
One thing that’s helpful is knowing about use of deck views, specifically in desktop viewports.

  • In which context are you using it?
    Any examples (screenshots) are always helpful to see…

I ask because we’re thinking that for wide viewports, we could split the deck rows into a couple columns, similar to cards, allowing you to both see more items, and keeping the actions closer to the primary and secondary text.

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  • UX
45 REPLIES 45

Lynn
Participant V

Thank you. Sounds like this will improve deck views at long last.

@Marc_Dillon right now we’ve made small changes to the presentation layer, but have noted the request for a wider summary view.

As we make changes to the editing experience side, we have a chance to address that length; the use case makes sense if the primary headers are short, as noted above. It also makes sense on desktop, where have much more space between the fields, even in a moderate sized desktop browser.

I am not a big fan of what the entire design team did to ux design of this wonderful platform
My opinion is that you do not have a clue what are you doing over there (my opinion don’t be offended)

Making summery column a “bit” wider, and view a bit different, that is what you were doing, that is your announcement, and a priority___???

My advice, in a nicest way possible is better look and take care of all does UX solutions that are bugging us all, and all our clients.

Visual of detail view, the whole visual needs a lot of work (not able to divide some information ang grup of information wit spacers or with lines)
show columns that are sliding to the left and popping up every ware.
quick edit mistakes.
logo in form view dragged to left.
Formatting of the font size that doesn’t do anything.
images blank spaces.
Plain look of entire program when you look at it, no substance at all.
lose that MS DOS stile in dark view.

The whole feel of the UX is depressing and unprofessional. Look what others are doing please and how it looks.

Again i am very very frustrated about the ux design, but not only me, i think that everybody that we have showed the app made the same comment, functions are good but the look is so bad.

Not offended.

We have lots (lots!) to do across the entire product surface. We do think it’s fair to app creators to give updates, even to smaller changes, as we need to both fix, refine and develop, but need to be cognizant of deployed apps in the field.

Even though this is billed as an Announcement, it doesn’t always reflect a major release.

Small, well-communicated changes like this are greatly preferred over no changes or large, poorly-communicated changes. Here’s hoping your approach continues!

True! It’s a first time that i actualy understand visualy what the change is.

Took the words (or rather the emoji) out of my mouth

Steve
Participant V

Thank you for this excellent announcement! Both well presented, and welcome changes!

Aurelien
Participant V

Excellent ! Thank you for your hard work, all this changes are very welcome

@Mike_Moss I would have some suggestions about deck view improvement with the nested column option, should I make a feature request or can I drop that here ?

@Aurelien let’s make that a feature request, so we have a thread.
What’s always helpful is the context of use:

  • what the app (and user) is trying to do (the context)
  • why deck view (the form factor) as opposed to others, works best in this scenario

Since as you know, AppSheet is used in so many contexts, it’s great for us to see the apps in the wild. Thanks.

The deck view is default for the form factor XY. Users never care about the XY coordinates. Any way to suppress this and shoot something more important?

Chetty
Participant III

Hi Mike, can we possibly have an option to display the headers alongside the data in Deck view? I currently use Deck view to display project titles and end dates, however as projects have several dates associated with them I’d like to explicitly state that the date is the end date.
Currently it looks like this;

Project 1
11/05/2021

However it would be awesome if it could look like this;

Project Name: Project 1
Project end date: 11/05/2021

With the option to switch on and off the title for each header, allowing this;

Project 1
Project end date: 11/05/2021

Any help appreciated!

I believe you can do that now, using a virtual column and concatenating.

Awesome. Thanks @Mike_Moss I’ll give that a go.

Okay @Mike_Moss , I’ve tried this and it works! However, I now see this new concatenated field in the Detailed view which I don’t want. Any way around this?

Hi @Chetty

Use the Column Order options
You can set order, but also pick the ones you want to see and the ones you don’t want

Apologies @Aurelien, your suggestion does work, thanks. I was looking at the slice rather than the detailed view.
It really isn’t very obvious from the wording ‘Column Order’ or the description below and it’s frustrating having to come to these forums for such trivial things. I really hope developers can address this and make the app more intuitive.

Hi @Mike_Moss

In case we do not select any filed for summary column on deck view, we wish the strings on primary header to get the full width. Currenty, they are cut off and killing the mostly half of spaces unused.

Steve
Participant V

No, @Aurelien’s suggestion is correct.

Thanks for the work UX team, it’s much appreciated!! Looking forward to more

@Mike_Moss
I’ve got a problem with the new deck view. The summary column is not showing on most records. This needs to show. I have not made any changes to this view. I assume it is all due to the rollout of changes.

@Lucinda_Mason I’m having someone look into this.

Thank you Mike.

Hamlet
Participant V

Hi @Mike_Moss

I would like a Deck view option for desktops with more columns. Right now I’m using Card view so there can be many columns, but I want the action buttons to show for each item and Card view just shows the 3 dots.

This is a property management App. you can see an example below:


@Hamlet Thanks for posting this. Are you using deck view for any inline lists or dashboards as well?

I would use it for a dashboard if Deck view had columns. I have a dashboard now but I’m using it with another view type at the moment.

Like I said, I could really use the option that Deck view gives you of having action buttons show right there on each item. But it looks too damn weird on desktops. Having that looooong deck item across the screen.

PocketDragon
Participant II

I’m sorry, but I have to say this is a little frustrating. A lot of this text formatting is a nice touch, but we had the option to make adjustments in Format Rules. In the meantime we are locked into the summary and header column sizes. I know this update is very useful for people who wanted a lot more space in the summary, but some of us designed our app views around the existing constraints. Now most my headers in deck view are significantly truncated on mobile devices, even when the summary is empty. I’ll have to go back at some point and shorten the data in hundreds of rows to fit this new view. Ouch. Is there any possibility of making this adjustable? Even just 2 size options? Or creating another summary column on the second row?

I do like having an extra character or 2 in the summary on occasion, but I’m wondering why people haven’t been using “Ignore Seconds” and virtual columns to minimize these long datetime strings.

Thanks for keeping us posted on these changes and everything that goes into keeping AppSheet updated.

Yeah, one size definitely does not fit all. You get the sense the people making these decisions don’t have much experience making apps with AppSheet?

Update: visual refinements for deck height

One other change: currently deck view rows have a fixed height: this is regardless of how much content you have.

If you do not have an image or action bar (or just a primary header and actions), we felt it’s not necessary to maintain the large amounts of vertical height, so we’re sizing it to fit the form factor based on what columns you’re displaying:


One other change: if you don’t have a summary column, the primary header text should extend further to the right. @tsuji_koichi

@Aurelien As for your request re: nested views: It’s on our radar. We will be doing some work on nested views in general at a later date.

There will be more to come, but just wanted to give more info as changes roll out.

!!

Thank you!!!

I just wonder how those combinations is going to be looking like?

No Primary Header + Secondary header + Actions (no image)
Primary Header + No Secondary header + Actions (no image)
No Primary Header + No Secondary header + Summary + Actions (No image)
Actions only

so… looks like this.
Secondary + actions


Primary + actions

Summary + actions

Actions only? Not sure of that use case.

Thank you!!!

Yeah, just kidding.

I reckon the action to slide right / left stay available for any optimized layout for deck view. Also wonder if you have plan to remove “Beta” for those actions…

Yes, the Swipe Right and Swipe Left are a huge reason I use the deck view! This will be great with the size modifications.

No plans to change that action (not sure about when to remove the Beta though).

Sure.

FYG, slide action is exacty 3 years old, and still beta, thats our point.

This is not working in map view.

My setting

Deck View (working)

Map View (not working)

Hi @Mike_Moss
I understand that there is a limit to 6 actions when we use an image.
3X_8_8_8880c49ce450cd77b8b7732e5ebf60a1582e5db2.png

But we should be able to see more actions when there is no image.
3X_c_e_ce4b431e452575f2ba0f0300bb0b57f550c401c7.png

See also:


See also: