I’ve been trying out Grist for a month or so now and really like it; however, coming from Airtable I really need the “Interface Designer”. Is there anything like that someone has found for Grist? If so can you point me in the direction of an example?
Donald
Not trying to be critical, but not being an AirTable user, I don’t have a mental image of their Interface Designer to be able to suggest alternatives/workarounds. Could you tell us what functionality you’re needing and what you’re trying to accomplish?
As far as Grist’s ability to create a consistent UI, it really doesn’t have that ability. I’ve played with WordPress (very superficially) so I understand how difficult it is to make the UI’s responsive, so I understand Grist not even trying, but it limits usefulness, especially on phones where it’s difficult to move splitter bars. (Maybe impossible? I’ve not been able to do it.)
I’d settle for the ability to declare Pages to be Full, Tablet (1280 or less), or Phone optimized, and filter the pages list based on which interface is being used. Then I could make three different versions of each page that needs to be usable on all three formats.
Is this the kind of thing you’re needing too? Or does the Interface Designer do more/other than optimizing layouts for screen sizes?
Ever since Dbase III there has always been a desire to have a front end so non-technical folks can use inlieu of neophites trying to mutle through data. Where I work we have multiple folks that would never be able to get the information they need by looking through spreadsheet/dstabase information. I like what Grist has to offer and some of the benifits it has over Airtable make it a great alternative for me. Thank you for your thoughts.
Donald
We are always open to ideas. Thanks @SESummers for yours! (By “splitter bars” do you mean collapsed sections or resizing columns or something else?)
@Donald_Brunswick, if you have some screenshots of your favorite examples of Airtable interfaces for your use-case (esp. the kind that you need for non-technical folks), that would be very helpful.
I can’t move either the grid column separators or the dividers between widgets on a page, even with a stylus (one of those rubber dome tips, not a digital one). If it’s supposed to be working I can try some experiments. Any suggestions?
No, configuring views doesn’t work on touchscreens (or most functionality involving dragging, sadly). The idea is that with your “creator” hat on, you’d use a desktop to configure views, and then functionality for the “end-user” should work on mobile + touchscreen.
That’s where having multiple pages with the same name selected by screen width (and ideally with the window width constrained to match) would make it possible to at least manually adapt to the client devices.