Why?
Oh OK, great
Dunno if these are “Dream features”, but certainly things I’d like to see added over time:
- Undo/redo
- Warnings before doing any action that wipes a layout (e.g. changing the source of a Tab; changing from a List view to a Details view)
- Duplicate components
- Reuse layouts
- Backup/restore
- Export/import
- Push app changes to people who’ve copied the app (with the option to ignore the changes!)
- Template component
- Single Value component
- Template column (and component) have the option to reference any sheet, not just the current
- Google Sheets formulas in Template columns (and components)
- Column references in Rich Text Field (e.g. {columnname} or {sheetname!coulmnname!key} for specific cells in other sheets)
- Styling of labels and fields (Would like to be able to control the spacing in particular, but other properties too). Initially, maybe could be done by allowing devs to add CSS class to components and then having a section Settings for custom CSS. Down the track could consider an actual style editor.
- Button bars (multiple buttons horizontally)
- Be able to specify a cell that contains field labels and use them to automatically replace the original ones (useful for internationalisation). this could be in the form of {original:replacement}.
- Allow Buttons to link to Tabs, including hidden ones.
That’s all for now, but I’m sure I’ll think of more! 
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Buttons in apps don’t usually jump to other tabs, but to subsidiary screens, which Glide already supports (select the “Link to screen” action in a Button).
What’s a Template component and a Single Value component?
Could you elaborate on what you mean by “Template column (and component) have the option to reference any sheet, not just the current”? How would that work, or what exactly are you trying to accomplish?
Hi Mark
You can read my thoughts on Buttons linking to Tabs here: Can you add option to link Buttons to Tabs?
What’s a Template component and a Single Value component?
Hmm? When I was responding on this post it made a lot of sense: Can custom Rich Text fields include field references?
I’m not sure about the Template component now! I think I was thinking of it as simply an alternative to creating a Template column.
The Single Value component might be useful for displaying single values from other sheets. I first started “needing” it when I want to display the date on my Today page of my app.
In the end I restructured my sheets and screens, and created a today sheet with just one row with all the bits of today data in it. However, this data is only available on that screen. I’d have to replicate it if I wanted to use it on another screen, using a single value column in that sheet.
Obviously neither is essential as the current method works.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by “Template column (and component) have the option to reference any sheet, not just the current”? How would that work, or what exactly are you trying to accomplish?
The point of that is about skipping the need for the Single Value column for templates. So, the Template column instead of looking in the Single Value column that you have to create first, could directly reference the single value source. I think that’s just tidier as it’s one step process instead of two, thus one pace to edit.
From what I understand you want two things:
- Screens that buttons link to should be permanent, i.e not go away when the button goes away, and potentially usable in other buttons.
- It should be less work to configure and use computed values, and not require going back and forth between the components and the data editor.
Did I get that right?
Yeah, that probably summarises it pretty well. Just trying to streamline development.
Four more!
- Be able to change component types for a field without having to delete and recreate the field. As Glide automagically creates layouts, it’d be nice to just go through and change the component types. e.g. for checkboxes to switches, for text to numeric, from text to notes, from text to choices, etc etc
- A Theme like Bold but that only has a single row header.
Option to double tap an image to open it in a view mode- When deleting an app, add option to delete the sheet as well. This is particularly useful while we are using Duplicate as a backup method.
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That would be very helpful!!!
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Doing an export from Google calendar to a Google sheet is pretty straight forward to script. Yes there is that intermediary step but a lot of times it may be needed to further “process” the data. I guess a direct feed into Glide, that would be a two way thing, cutting out the middle man of the sheet would definitely be an advantage. Especially that you can do some formatting and “processing” within the Glide environment now.
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Being able to change the spreadsheet that an app is linked to would be a on my list. I understand that matching the structure would be critical and would be fine if only exact structure matches would be allowed. As for the data that resides on the Glide servers vs. what is in the new spreadsheet, an option for keeping one or the other (the data in Glide or the data in the new spreadsheet) would be a plus as well.
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Just curious what you mean by your theme request.
There is an action for images to ‘Enlarge Image’. Is that what you mean, or something different?
User groups, based on whitelisted users as members of each group. Then based on the group they belong to, the developer could control the visibility of various screens, pages, tabs and components. Also based on these groups the ability to edit add delete data on the various sheets.
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- Some sort of data encryption. It still makes me nervous that all this data is saved unencrypted in a spreadsheet that someone in an organisation has access to. And this would also be important if we want to “sell” our apps via sharing (which is necessary if we want to push app updates).
e.g. My app is (among other things) a diary. If I share it with Joe Bloggs he won’t be too happy if he realises his personal entries (such as medical appointments) are fully visible to me in the spreadsheet!
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Ability to have user data globally available.
Like anything on ‘App: User’ (sheet generated when people login) will be available globally in the app.
This is so that you dont have to make relations to a user spreadsheet to show/hide certain elements/components or tailor a screen.
Edit: Now that I think more about it, it would solve a lot of problems that we use workarounds for.
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No need to duplicate sheets so that one is for display and one is for editing. You can hide the button to edit if they do not have access.
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You would have the ability to paywall some features. Just hide the component if they dont have the pro account.
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Dynamic choice component will be easier to implement.
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Just less lookups needed in general if you can make the attributes accesible once you make the relation to the global sheet.
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Integration with Stripe Connect or ACH payments.
Ideal activated in Stripe. 90% of Dutch people use Ideal to make payments. It is possible to activate that in Stripe. Essential to have that for Dutch people that want to use Stripe as a shop.
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- Option to use two themes. One for light mode and one for dark mode. And these could be user selectable, or auto selected by the OS.
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