This is my very first post! I’m Carie, the UX Designer at AppSheet. Thank you so much for all the comments and feedback regarding branding and theme colors! Our goal is to improve the UI/UX of your apps while trying to incorporate branding in more thoughtful, meaningful ways. One example is using color to highlight content and inform users rather than distract them. Here is a mockup of a small change we’re planning to introduce soon that demonstrates the idea:
Option to add logo into the top header next to the menu
Bottom navigation will use color to show the active view
Theme background, colors, and text will have higher contrast for accessibility
I’ll continue to update you on this and any new design announcements moving forward! Would love to hear your thoughts especially around branding and how its being used in your apps. Thank you and have a Happy New Year!
Do you think we could get a third option to select the light/dark theme by formula? Then USERSETTINGS(“Theme”) could be used to give the user control of the light/dark part, and we would set the color as developers.
Also regarding the color, it would be great if we could assign different colors to each view, or at least per table. This can help indicate to the user where they are in the app by having a different color for Customers, Invoices, Products, etc- and match the colors to formatting rules.
The optional app icon in the menu is a great addition for branding! Thank you! If I could make one last suggestion, please allow hiding the menu separately from the search button.
Hi @GreenFlux! Thank you! All great suggestions:
1 - Love the idea of having light/dark theme controllable by the user, I’ll do more research
2 and 3 - I’ll talk to @morgan about formatting rules, see what’s possible, and about having the menu option separate from search.
All positive changes for me, thanks AppSheet team!
Love that you guys are posting updates and seeking suggestions, make me super excited for the future of AppSheet and where the Dev/Design team is taking it.
Hi @Grant_Stead! So for now it’ll be predefined so we can focus on improving the overall UI but hex values have been an ongoing topic amongst the front-end crew! We’re working on ways to allow for more flexibility and customization while ensuring everyones’ apps still meet usability and accessibility standards.
I understand completely. It’s a fuzzy line between, this is what good should be, and allowing someone to make a horrid Appsheet app, that doesn’t represent your brand well
Bottom navigation will use color to show the active view
I assume that this will be an option. All additional options are welcome, of course.
The notion of “the active view” can be a little be problematic if you set up your app such that the active view is a secondary menu that takes the user to other “subviews” (my term). As the app is currently configured, the bottom menu reverts to its normal, unused appearance when this happens. It would be nice, though, if app developers could designate reference views to be treated as part of specific primary menu views so that the relevant icon would remain highlighted. Thanks!
Possible to add the ability to have app name in the top again? I know its just a simple swipe right to see the currant app, but still is a little in convenient and received numerous complaints from users
@carie
Even I am too late to comment about this annonucement. I am very hope to add “using image or coloured background for views” and “using image as column header” features.
Thank you.
And expressions for branding images would be really helpful. I’ve had to make (and maintain) multiple copies of an app for a client just to get two different app icons and backgrounds, because branding is very important to them.
And I would love to give the user control over the light/dark theme using USERSETTINGS().
Also, different color-themes per view would really add to the UX. Could the Views for a given table be added to the list of Columns and Actions for formatting rules?
Ok, that’s the end of my wishlist . I would love to hear your thoughts on these and which items may already be in the pipeline. Thanks again for all your work on this, @nico!
Why we have option of color change in footer only? Going back to Appsheet old theme, better to change theme both header and footer, at least, as option. Is there any reason we cant change header color?
The using a custom primary color is definitely on our radar. It’ll require a little work just because we have pre-computed themes but I want to work on that.
The option to add colored header and footer is controversial in our team but it seems reasonable for backwards compatibility for older apps at least.
