Deployment Time: 2:00 PM PST
Features & enhancements
| Item |
Description |
| Enhancement |
The following enhancements have been made to the Expression Assistant:
- You can now accept autocompletions with the Tab key.
- Additional keyboard shortcuts are now supported. See Keyboard shortcuts.
|
| Enhancement |
In the AppSheet app editor, when selecting multiple tabs from Google Sheet when adding a table to an app, the number of selected tabs is now displayed. For example:
3 Likes
Love the extra additions to expression assistant. I’ve discovered one annoyance today, I keep hitting the escape key thinking it’ll just back me out of the autocomplete menu but it instead closes the entire expression assistant and I lose any of the expression that I’ve been working on.
This bit me like 5 times in a row just now so I was wondering why I had that instinct so ingrained. I went exploring other systems. In both App Scripts and GSheet, escape key simply closes the autocomplete menu but nothing else. Hitting escape again in GSheets exits out of the formula editor.
I hope you can add this intermediate escape to expression assistant to avoid losing our work in these cases!
6 Likes
I’m really glad that the Tab key completes it. 
I used to have trouble moving to the DataExplorer or Example section.
2 Likes
@lizlynch , just wanted to make sure you saw my previous reply, as this issue continues to disrupt me over and over again.
1 Like
I don’t know if I haven’t got the update yet but what I’m getting is that now we have 2 ways to autocomplete (tab and enter) and no way to do indentation, at least on Mac, as the current shortcut for indentation triggers page change in Chrome. Such a bad UX. 
@Marc_Dillon Yes! I did pass this on to the AppSheet dev team. I believe it’s on the radar, but there isn’t a definitive timeframe for when it will be resolved. Thank you for raising this and apologies for the inconvenience the issue is causing.
1 Like
You probably need to edit your chrome shortcuts to avoid this. I use Firefox mostly, and I had to disable its ctrl-shift-s shortcut in order to use that for expression assistant save on the Appsheet editor.
3 Likes
Thanks @Marc_Dillon I did this but I’m still unable to do indentantion, I guess I just haven’t got the update yet
Thanks for the feedback. I will try to fix the Escape key being handled by modal close’ in the coming weeks, which will also allow us to use Tab for indentation (Esc-Tab allowing you to keyboard navigate the expression modal).
5 Likes
@Karimmc2 I tested on a Mac and indentation worked fine. I had to click inside the textbox to not trigger page change. If I had not clicked inside the textbox, the page forward and page backward behavior was triggered.
The updates are released to everyone.
1 Like
Hi! @wabrian Thanks. I switched to safari and both ⌘-[ and⌘-] worked fine. Using Chrome it is still not working on Mac. I tried it on iPad and same thing, works on Safari but not on Chrome. I still haven’t found a way to disable the default shortcuts on Chrome to see if that way it would work.
2 Likes
Why not just leave enter for autoselect and tab for indentation?
I don’t understand what has been the issue with indentation since the begining of the new text editor.
@Karimmc2 Tab is used for accessibility of navigating the page.
Tab can be used for autocomplete because it goes away after one click, at which point tab can once again be used for navigating the page.
In order to use tab for indentation, we need an escape hatch, so it is not trivial to implement. We would like to, but are not prioritizing it at this time.
1 Like
Can we please have the Key of the table appearing in the expression assistants auto complete?
I often use different keys for tables so I have navigate back down to the explorer to find the key of the table I’m referencing. It would save me lots of time to have the key appear next to the type of the auto complete box just like it does in the Data Explorer.
3 Likes
Just an observation as well. Does anybody else feel that the vertical scroll bar that is on the list of available fields is frustrating in use? It always seems to me that as soon as you grab it to scroll that the list disappears.
2 Likes
@CleanSheets That seems like a reasonable request, let me see what I can do!
3 Likes
@wabrian and a fix for the vertical scroll? 
1 Like
@scott192 That’s a trickier fix unfortunately. But if many other users find the vertical scroll problematic, please like this message and I can look to prioritize that work.
2 Likes
Well…Why not show the complete list of fields all in one go without the scrollbar? It doesn’t seem to serve a purpose if the list disappears as soon as you try to scroll it? Sure, you can use the up and down arrow keys to move up and down the list as well so I suppose having the scrollbar showing does indicate that there are fields that are not in view.
1 Like
