I also would like to control whether 1st column gets frozen. Another issue is that the frozen column width takes up too much space. It would be great if the user could adjust that.
Thanks
Bob
2 Likes
Thank you everyone for testing the feature and sharing your feedback.
Could any of you share a use case why you specifically donât want freezing the first column (when itâs a label or key) to be enabled? I understand how tedious it would be (with the feature being as is) for you to disable it, but weâd like to understand in which cases you donât want it in the first place. @Marc_Dillon @MultiTech_Visions @Austin_Lambeth @Jonathon @tsuji_koichi @Grant_Stead @Bob_Haizmann
Our plan however is to let app users control this in the end, similarly to how they control the width of a column.
Do you have any other feedback, maybe from the perspective of app users?
Thank you
3 Likes
My comment is not really based on use cases, but kinds of general talks for AppSheet apps.
First of all, ID is usualy human-not-readable, so we usually set to HIDDEN. so we are not able to use that field. (not displayed on table view)
Label fields is always not comes up as first column on the list type table, but most likely it is used as filed for grouping, may be, in that case, this label fields is not placed as first column for table view.
But realistically, use cases are not able to defined. There would be variety of use cases.
The best options which would accomodate such a complexility different use cases would be we have control âper view settingâ basis to turn On or Off. We are not able to expect which column would come first, so better to have option to set the field to be freezed when we order the columns for table view.
This discussion is not being able to be judged by the use cases, as we have unlimited cases.
10 Likes
I will often set a Label column with a lot of text in it, so that the record is more easily identifiable from a Ref column from another Table. For example a concatenation of multiple columns in the record.
But if Iâm viewing those records in a table view, I would always just show each column individually. I probably wouldnât even have the Label column in the table view. And in 99% of cases, the key would be hidden as well (since Iâd be using UNIQUEID). In that case the auto-system would have nothing to choose to freeze.
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Arthur_Rallu:
Our plan however is to let app users control this in the end, similarly to how they control the width of a column.
It is good.
But, more importantly , how we are able to tell app user that they have this option to freeze the column at the end intuitively.
The question is how AppSheet can be user friendly to guide users.
Everything is going to boil down to UI/UX stuffs, @Arthur_Rallu
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I have no desire for any new features that do not have an explicit switch in each view to turn on. We designed our apps around the features at the time of development. If I canât individually enable or disable the feature per view I am not gonna bother with that feature because there is gonna be some view I forget that wonât look the way I intend for it to look with this feature. I will probably never even enable this feature to be honest.
Our first column is lots of times an action column or not necessarily THE column that you would want always visible just because of the flow of our apps. We already donât use horizontal scrolling if we can help it due to the fact that some users might just not realize that it is there and then we get âhey can you add this to that viewâ.
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Arthur_Rallu:
Our plan however is to let app users control this in the end, similarly to how they control the width of a column.
This is good and bad cause I know my users. The second they get anything they break it or they âbreakâ it, and who gets all the emails about that? Me.
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Hang on and calm down, mate.
Probably we may have a gap for the understanding.
like @Austin_Lambeth quoted, is your plan is to give the app end user instead of app creator to control to freeze or not?
What you said earlier was to control this by the app users, but you also said that the settings is kinda of global and automated settings.
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Arthur_Rallu:
Could any of you share a use case why you specifically donât want freezing the first column
Iâve got a client thatâs got a crop-tracking app, and when viewing data points from the fields we wouldnât want to freeze the first column
- these data point contain various bits of data (insect counts, observations, etc.) and none would need to be frozen like that.
- in fact, freezing something like that might cause confusion to others when trying to explain (such as explaining the data collected to a farmer).
Same for a tele-health provider client of mine
- Theyâve got various patient data points (weights, BPs, meds, etc) and wouldnât want any 1 part to stand out
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Austin_Lambeth:
and who gets all the emails about that? Me.
But doesnât that translate to money for you???
is and all thatâŠ
1 Like
MultiTech_Visions:
Iâve got a client thatâs got a crop-tracking app, and when viewing data points from the fields we wouldnât want to freeze the first column
Would that first column be a key or label column?
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Not really, cause salaried means I get the same money no matter what lol. Iâd rather be developing a real feature with my work week than just adding frozen columns.
5 Likes
Steve:
Would that first column be a key or label column?
Likely yes, the label might be the first column.
- There might be a LongText field visible, or a summary later on in the table, that someone would have to scroll to see
- freezing the first column would take up some of that space.
Austin_Lambeth:
Not really, cause salaried
touché
2 Likes
Austin_Lambeth:
We designed our apps around the features at the time of development.
@Arthur_Rallu that pretty much sums it up. Iâd say, new views going forward so what you need to do, but existing views⊠Iâd rather we leave them alone.
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One common scenario for me is to have a date field as the first column, followed by the label column or some other column. I may want to freeze the first column of dates, but it isnât the label column that users expect to see when selecting from a REF list.
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I would use this in some of my apps but not all. I almost always use a slice to create a view so I can adjust column order any way I like.
As I canât define when I wonât use this my first request is per Tsuji - developer can turn frozen 1st column on or off per view. Another request is to enable the Context statement so we can turn this on for PC users who have the real estate to scroll, but it off for phone users where freezing the 1st column could take up half the view and render scrolling untenable.
Thanks for this useful feature.
Bob
.
3 Likes
It reminds my of the table sorting. We can define the âSort byâ. But then the user can sort it the way he wants it. Or we turn this off under UX > OPTIONS > Disable user sorting.
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Yeah speaking of this and other table options: so so so often I wish I could disable table headers on a UX per UX view, and recently had a scenario where I wanted to disable table sorting for a particular table. It sucks that these decisions are applied globally.
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Does " " for display name work?
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Nicely done, very useful on larger tables.
Thank you.
1 Like