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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,
The following updates were included in the April 20, 2023 release:
| Item | Description |
| Enhancement | For the desktop UI (preview), the drop-down performance is improved with respect to format rules. Previously, complex format rule conditions would cause visible lag for the user when a drop-down was opened. This has been fixed and performance should be on par with the mobile experience. |
| Bug | For the desktop UI (preview), fixed a bug where the emulator was not reflecting light or dark mode and theme color changes. |
| Bug | For desktop UI (preview), fixed a bug where form views accessed through menu or footer buttons would show an error if the user forced a sync. |
| Bug | For desktop UI (preview), fixed a bug where a form in progress could be cleared if a sync finished while the form was open. This fix will be rolled out gradually. It is deployed to 100% of free users and 10% of paid users. |
| Bug | For desktop UI (preview), fixed a bug where LinkToFilteredView() was not applying the filter correctly for detail views. |
| Bug | For desktop UI (preview), fixed a bug where primary actions were showing up when they should not in dashboard views. For example:
Before: 
After:  |
This problem meet with all my apps and all my account.
Please solve this bugs asap.
Hi, @Peter-Google @Arthur_Rallu @lizlynch @amyplin thanks for answering, I work in a precast concrete plant, I am in the planning area, we need to do a planning of elements per day, each element has a name, and we need to see the entire space in the calendar view, and it is important to manage to hide the time area when it is not being used or the field is empty.
1) In the first instance it would be something visual, and in the second instance it would be the possibility of dragging events between dates as it is done with Google Calendar. And thus give dynamism to the calendar that we currently have.
2) If with this improvement there would be more work space and efficiency in the calendar that we currently have, I send you an example image.
3) I think that for many who use the calendar for these things it would be very beneficial and the function of dragging between dates in the calendar.
Thanks in advance
Hi @MiguelQ90 , apologies for the delayed reply. What you are describing, the idea of visually organizing and planning work, is handled today by many AppSheet creators using a "Kanban" pattern via dashboard and card views. Have you tried this pattern yourself? There is a template app you can copy/clone to try yourself: https://www.appsheet.com/templates/Track-projects-and-related-tasks-in-a-kanban-dashboard?appGuidStr...
While you can't drag and drop cards right now, you can still organize cards into groups (today, planned, tomorrow, etc), and click on cards to perform various actions, and the actions can move cards around between the groups (e.g., actions can be run against different tables, not just the current table).
I appreciate the feedback you gave below, it is very thoughtful. I want to understand if this Kanban style experience meets your needs better than what the Calendar view offers. For example, you could sort cards by time in a group, similar to a Calendar. Thanks.
Hi @birikim, thanks for your report. I believe you are referring to quick edit in table view, not quick edit in detail view, is that correct?
If so, I just tried it out using the new Desktop UI (not the legacy Desktop UI), and a basically configured app works fine for me, please see this video demonstration:
If you are still able to repro the issue yourself, can you share a video of a screencast that shows you reproducing the issue, and can you also describe any app settings you are using (e.g., expressions, valid_if or show_if, etc) that might be affecting the behavior? Thanks.
Hi @birikim
Based on your video and the test by @Peter-Google , my first impression is that you have some "Reset on edit" expression set that is re-Initializing the column value anytime you make a change. Check the "Reset on edit" property in that column. See image below.
Here are some additional questions/details needed:
- The first column in the editable table is also editable. Does it behave the same way?
- You had previously stated, and confirmed, that the values you enter into the editable Table ARE recorded and can be seen AFTER tapping on Save. You didn't show this in the video and is an important detail to confirm.
