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. 

[sak]

Hi @Arthur_Rallu 

I've noticed today that once I move my cursor over a field and click on the visual edit button, the system automatically points me to the related view instead of letting me choose whether I want to edit the field or the view. Is this new change intentional?

In my opinion, the previous version was much more convenient because editing every column takes so much time and the option to use visual edit button had made it a lot easier. With the new change, I have to search for the field in the view options, which takes a lot more time to do so because the displayed name and the actual column name are not the same.

[Aurelien]

I just issued a ticket for this 🤣

"we have forwarded your issue to our specialist team"

[Aurelien]

Hi @Arthur_Rallu and @amyplin 

There was various requests about a recent change in the visual editing behavior that misleads the app creator when editing:

Solved: Visual Editing of Column in App Editor NOT WORKING - Google Cloud Community

Strange issues in the visual editor - Google Cloud Community

Basically, here what happens if we want to edit a column, with the problems that occurs now:

In short:

- editing a column opens a view settings

- there is a redundancy for editing the view

- it adds more clicks and confusion when it comes to editing a column, especially when having a large number of columns and using display names

Despite explaining this to the support team, I got this answer:

"We have reviewed the details, and we would like to inform you that this change was intentional. The functionality is still there, just in a different place. Once you are taken to the column order control, you can click on the column itself to get to the edit column structure."

However, it still does not make sense to me.

Is that really intentional? Or is it a temporary situation caused by something else?

Thank you in advance for considering

Attn @KemAve @Gustavo_Eduardo 

[ai_saks]

I totally agree that there is a redundancy for editing the view and I would love to get the column editing function back. 

"Once you are taken to the column order control, you can click on the column itself to get to the edit column structure" >>> it adds more clicks and confusion when it comes to editing a column, especially when having a large number of columns and using display names. 

Thanks @Aurelien for pointing this out for the Appsheet team. I hope they can change it back or do something about it.

[Thilina_Wick]

To add to this I found if I have a child tables column in a form I accessed via Parent Table when I click the edit button it sends me only to the parent view. 😆 I feel this was a bit more rushed than what we are used to from the appsheet team.

[Aurelien]

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@Thilina_Wick wrote:

To add to this I found if I have a child tables column in a form I accessed via Parent Table when I click the edit button it sends me only to the parent view.

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Thanks for raising this: it is an old behavior, not a recent change due to the visual editor. I agree it would be nice to address this though 🙂

[amyplin]

This seems like a bug separate from the new behavior, can you create a support ticket so we can take a look at your app? Thanks! 

[Steve]

This is just bad design.

[KemAve]

Much thanks for following up on this. It is indeed a redundancy for Column Editing, as there's already a View Editing feature for the app preview's Visual Editor.

I believe most devs would like the direct and quicker way of column editing via the app preview. It is more intuitive, because sometimes, we use column alias names (display names), and it takes less time figuring out which column I was really editing if looking at the app preview. Very handy.

With the recent behavior, linking to column order setting in View Settings instead doesn't help in this case, and adds more time for troubleshooting for columns with aliases. Although I do understand that it should be mainly the developer's naming discipline that comes into play first. 😅

[Gustavo_Eduardo]

To tell the truth, dear @Aurelien , to me this seems like a smoke screen to buy time. I was told 'we have resolved the issue,' which makes me think that perhaps I haven't even been answered by a real person. In any case, this problem arose after the bug from a few weeks ago (the actions bug). It leaves me wondering.