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Hey everyone,
We’re excited to announce we are now previewing our new visual design for applications that are accessed on desktop browsers.
Currently, your AppSheet applications tend to follow mobile design patterns even when your users have large screens and these patterns can be confusing to desktop users. The new design lets these desktop users navigate their apps more easily and access information in context, and provides an efficient way to create and update records without losing context. App creators can also present more information by leveraging the larger screens but still keep it organized.
Here are some before and after images that better illustrate the design changes.
Legacy Design - Screenshot #1: Sifting through a collection of records grouped by City and State after selecting a State (Deck View)
Legacy Design - Screenshot #2: Looking at a specific record after selecting that record in the screen above (Detail View)
Legacy Design - Screenshot #3: Editing an existing record/Creating a new record (Form View)
New Design - Screenshot #1: Seeing your data in context (Deck View + Detail View)
New Design - Screenshot #2: Focusing on a specific record (Detail View)
New Design - Screenshot #3: Editing in place an existing record
New Design - Screenshot #4: Creating a new record (Form View)
What’s next? Well, this is still a work in progress. We’ve been gathering feedback from a number of design partners, including some of you in the AppSheet Community, and we know there is more to do before it can properly support all of your applications. At this stage, we feel that it would be good to let you play with the new design and to give you an opportunity to share your feedback - what you like, what doesn't work, what you think could use some improvements. This represents a significant change and your feedback will help us guide our next steps.
As this feature is in Preview, you may see visual changes in your apps as we work to improve the new desktop design in real-time. We don't recommend using the new desktop design in your production apps.
Thank you
The AppSheet Team
FAQ
How do I get access to this new desktop design?
We are currently slowly ramping this new experience over the next week or so, so you may not see this option in the editor immediately.
For each application, you can opt-in to use the new desktop design. You can toggle between the new and legacy desktop modes, as desired.
Follow these steps to enable the new design in your app:
- Open the app in the app editor
- Navigate to the UX > Options pane
- Enable the Desktop mode (Preview) option - see screenshot below
- Save the app in the Editor
All users of this application that access the app on a desktop browser will then see the new design after their next sync.
How do I configure the design of my app? I don’t see any new settings in the Editor!
There are minimal changes to the Editor for now. Mostly, the same settings are leveraged to specify the desktop and mobile designs. Let me give you an example.
Your apps have “primary views” and “menu views”. With the new desktop design, all of your views will be accessible from a side menu. That menu will list first the “primary views” and then the “secondary views”. In the future, we will adjust the configuration settings and in particular the language so that it makes sense for both mobile and desktop apps. For example, position values of "left most" and "right most" don't make sense for the new desktop design with its vertical menu structure.
We’ll be giving app creators more controls over some features that are currently set by default.
Is there some documentation or more information on what changed?
See Optimize the user experience using the new desktop design (Preview). We’ll update it over time.
Is there a list of functionalities that are known to not work with the new design?
Yes.
First, here is a list [as of July 31st] of (high-level) issues and requests that were reported to us and that still need fixes or assessments. Some of them are independent of the desktop mode, but we're still listing them here since people may want to know about them and so they don't need to report them unless it was reported for different app configurations :
| General theme | Issues |
| Form View |
|
| Navigation expressions: LINKTOROW(), LINKTOFORM(), etc |
|
| Format rules |
|
| Detail View UI |
- In some configurations, showing the wrong display names in a Detail tab - Edit-in-place in Dashboard view - Sync gets the app user out of Editing mode in a Detail View |
| General UI |
- Improvement requests on the subnav bar (e.g. larger text button, better responsiveness w.r.t. title, actions, text) - Clicking in grey area around onboarding view should not navigate the app in the background - Filtering on Dashboard - Tooltip for icon action buttons - Chart Views do not behave like other views |
| Localization of strings | Some strings are missing |
| CSV import/export |
|
| Other app functionalities |
- Missing Share, Feedback buttons - App Gallery behaving differently - Support of Amazon Cognito (missing account icon) - OCR not working on Desktop |
| Functionalities for app creators | “Preview as” is not available for the desktop emulator |
Second, here is a list of some issues and feature requests that we know we are not going to tackle, at least for now.
| Supporting multiple navigation actions in a grouped action |
This is not something that we support. The team very intentionally did not want to support this. App creators should not rely on it and it won’t work in desktop mode. |
| Multiple requests to improve the Table View UI |
We got requests to improve the Table View in general. The requests are valid, but that is out of scope for desktop mode. Changes we would be making would also impact the legacy UI and mobile apps. |
| LINKTOPARENTVIEW() not supported | For desktop users, there are better options to navigate back: the browser’s back button and the breadcrumbs. |
| Font size changes (via app settings) lead to layout issues | Generally, we recommend using the browser’s zoom which does a better job at resizing the app. |
| Background image |
See also Limitations and known issues.
How do I provide feedback?
Please share your feedback in this thread below this message!
Hi!
I wanted to re-draw the attention of the AppSheet team to 2 critical (in my opinion) problems:
1. Card disappears from the viewport ("No items selected") - when changing/editing a child record from the parent.
For example, we go to "order 1" and try to transfer "product X" to "order 2" by selecting a new order in the card - we get "No items selected"
 |  |  |
I have already written about this earlier with a detailed explanation here:
I want to say that it seriously restricts the use cases of the application. Complicates and can be said to "break" the normal navigation of the application.
In my opinion, it is required to "hold" an open view in the working window, regardless of the changes being made.
2. "Search" - affects related views and navigation.
The links indicated in paragraph 1 also have detailed information on this issue.
In the old version, when you enter a value in the search, it is not passed to the associated views. And when you click the "back" button, i.e. when you return to the view we were looking for - the value is saved.
In the new desktop UI, the search value is passed to all related views, and it has to be "cleared" to display elements.
It was written about:
@Andrew_W :
https://www.google cloud community.com/gc/Announcements/In-Preview-New-UI-design-for-desktop-users/m...
@KON_TROLL :
https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Announcements/In-Preview-New-UI-design-for-desktop-users/m-p...
I would like to know if the AppSheet team plans to fix these problems?
@Adam-google An app that in production for past one year that I did not make any changes started seeing bug. Not using Desktop UI. Its using old setup. Still the automation bot is failing to add intital value. Everything that was working perfect is broken now.
These are messages from my clients and I am not sure how to even fix things at the moment. There is no point in contacting support anymore.
I thank the AppSheet team for fixing problems with detai views!
In the release of March 21, a long-awaited update was released by me
I confirm the elimination of the problem specified in paragraph 1:
Now the detailed view card does not disappear from the viewport (when changing the parent record or grouping)
Editing:
Group change:
It's amazing) Now I can enable a new view for my app!
LINK BACK TO ORIGINAL App Collection App
I have an app that merely acts as a "Main portal" with a collection of apps using DeepLinks expressions to launch other apps.
When an app is launched through that main portal, a link appears in the side bar that allows the users to go back to the main portal.
However, if I link to an app with Desktop mode view, the back link does not appear and is instead replaced by the generic App Gallery.
And moreover, in another dekstop mode app, no link appears at all.
Users need to close the app and relaunch the Main portal app manually.
Is this a bug or is there a setting I need to check. I compared every setting of the two (2) desktop apps and they are the same, so I can't figure out why one shows App gallery, while the other does not show anything.
I have a suspicion that the "Edit" button does not open MyTable_Form, but MyTable_Detail with the fields that are described in it.
Situation: table with fields Name1, Name2, FullName (as virtual concatenate(Name1," ",Name2)).
"Edit" shows such a form.
But if System-generated MyTable_Detail view ColumnOrder changed to show only FullName field.
I only see
You just have to change the Desktop Behaviour under your Edit action
Edit: Here is the official documentation about it:
Actions: The Essentials - AppSheet Help
Is there a limit to Inline actions to just 3 only ? IF YES then thats bad and needs to be able to add more inline actions.
Edit: This is the response I got from support. I sent them screenshots of DETAIL view in a dashboard and asked if inline action is limited to THREE numbers per column. They send me back there is no issues and sent me back a CARD view picture. Not sure where this is going.
@devingu this is everyday thing now.
