Sorting of items in App editor

Product Suggestions
1

Hi

Open question: Is there anyway that the programmers could consider sorting the data presented in the app designer?

Let me give a few examples;

  1. In the variables data source selector the “tree structure” view have “variables”, “app info” and “aggregations”. But within each group no sorting is applied. Result is a completely random list.
    image

  2. For the “Records” pane the same applies within the list of tables–> record placeholder, queries. No structure in data presentation.

  3. When selecting a record data source it appear to reuse the “Records”/“Record placeholder” listing but as the first list is scrambled this listing gets scrambled as well. In the expression editor someone took the decision to sort the selector alphabetically (praise to them), but in the new expression editor for “enabled state” this was forgotten. The naming of @variables also differs between “variable” and “variables” between the two selection popups, which is puzzling.

You could argue that it is shown in the order it was built, but if an app is exported and imported the system do not apply any ordering, hence it may an idea that the editor provides structure instead.

This might be dismissed as just a silly remark because the editor works, but it makes the Tulip editor appear as a product in progress instead of the full fletched super editor that it should have reached after 278 revisions of the product.

So the general request; When you make a combobox, selection drop down or similar as part of your design - please think about how data is presented instead of just showing in the order it was pulled from the database.

Thanks for considering our suggestions :slight_smile:
rgds
asger

2

Hi @ASharp-J
I totally agree.

I would actually add: If you find a ne solution on solving something better (Combobox, Page navigation…) release it on one place, collect feedback, then release it everywhere… It’s nerve-wracking, to be confronted with different behaviors on different places… and to teach those to new users.
Example 1:
image
image

Example 2:
image
image

This one brought me to the brink of despair I looked as a complete idiot while finding out why @variable. did not have any variables listed at all…

3

@ASharp-J Thank you for this feedback. We have indeed been working on new patterns for selecting data within the platform, and we realize there are some different ways for achieving the same thing, and this can lead to confusion. I can tell you that we are working towards making these more consistent and adding better defaults for sorting. We are also looking forward to a re-design of the ‘Records’ pane that will hopefully make this experience easier for you to work with in the future. Thanks for your patience while we get these improvements ready to deliver!

1 Like