First visual editing in the AppSheet editor

[Arthur_Rallu]

Hello AppSheet community, 

We are excited to roll out to GA (General Availability) our first visual editing features to all AppSheet creators, starting today.

This a new way for AppSheet creators to make changes to their apps and navigate the editor. It's intuitive for anyone to point at what they want to change if they can see it. We are now letting you do that in the editor: you can now hover on visual components of the editor's app view and see possible editor actions for the outlined component. 

These actions will navigate you to relevant app settings. The scope is currently limited. Outlines are only available for some components visible in the app. For instance, Detail and Form Views have a lot more controls than the Deck View right now. Additionally, only some Editor actions are available, such as navigating users to Data components, View components, Action components and some of the general Settings. 

Here is a more dynamic example. If an AppSheet creator wants to edit an action or a column in a Detail View, here’s what it looks like:

Google AppSheet is a no-code development platform looking to empower anyone to build their own solutions. This new feature will make onboarding of new AppSheet creators faster and easier. We hope the more intuitive discovery of basic functionalities will let more people, independently of their technical skills, build their own applications. For users already familiar with AppSheet, this new functionality should provide a more efficient way of making certain edits. 

This new feature is rolling out to all accounts and is available in the updated editor UI. The rollout is starting today and you should see visual editing enabled in your account in the next week or two. You can turn it on/off based on your needs. Documentation is available here.

Thank you,

The Google AppSheet team

[Edit: This feature is Generally Available, as is the improved version of the AppSheet editor.] 

[Amjad]

Perfect, that will make a differenc!👍

[Suvrutt_Gurjar]

Thank you very much @Arthur_Rallu and team.

The expression assistant and this visual editing features have added powerful tools in the hands of app creators and will speed up the app editing process.

[SkrOYC]

I kindly ask you to add an option in the Editor Settings section so that we can deactivate the Edit toggle.

The current setup where the Edit toggle is always checked by default is really messing my workflow, needing to turn it off every single time I enter the editor.

Thanks

[amyplin]

Hey thanks for the feedback, this is definitely a topic of dicussion internally! It would help us if we could better understand the motivation behind your request,  can you describe your typical steps in the editor and how the 'Edit' mode is hindering your workflow?  Feel free to reply on here or message me directly! 

[SkrOYC]

Since there is an outline that marks every part of the emulator when testing something, it gets in my way. I'm not an user of this feature, so I would prefer to disable it so that it doesn't get in my way.
I think this will be a good solution for new people entering to the AppSheet world, or to creators that interact with the emulator a little bit more than I do

I think a good update could also be to show the visual editing thing after a delay. Like after 500 ms of hovering or similar

[amyplin]

Thanks for the input! We'll be making some updates in the next week or two, you can keep an eye out for it in the Release Notes! 

[Shahaf]

We just released an enhancement to the feature per your and others' requests-- remembering your setting (ON or OFF) across sessions and refreshes.

See release notes: https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Release-Notes/October-2-2023/bc-p/643736#M1883

Thanks for the input!

[scott192]

@Arthur_Rallu I'm not sure if this is an age old bug or one that has been introduced with the new editor updates.

The 'System generated Delete' button does not obey Prominence settings compared to the 'System generated Edit' button.

This behaviour occurs in both the new desktop preview and the mobile view.

My expectation is that the prominence settings for Delete would behave exactly the same way it does for all action buttons.

Bug or By Design?

[Arthur_Rallu]

Hey @scott192 
The delete button never really followed the prominence setting like other actions (whether sys-generated or not). I'm pretty sure it was by design but that was before my time. 

Any particular reason why you'd want this button placed differently?

[scott192]

@Arthur_Rallu Thanks for replying!  I wasn't asking for the button to be placed differently though...only that it follows the same convention as other action buttons that are placed using the 4 options.

As it stands at the moment, the 'Display Prominently' setting for the system Delete button will not apply...that's why I thought it was a bug.

[Arthur_Rallu]

Got it! Thanks. 
Yeah, it's always been like that. I agree it's a little odd - instead the editor should probably not show these prominence settings to avoid the confusion.