To reduce visual clutter, I suggest that empty fields can be hidden from the entity display. This can be implemented in different ways, for example as an button that allows empty fields (which have been enabled, but are empty) to become visible to edit.
I am aware of the ability to show hide the right sidebar of the fields, but I mean to automatically hide the fields present in the entity display itself (vertically). Currently when empty you see:
I like to keep a lot of fields enabled but just not visually taking up so much space and attention when empty.
Related: Individual Layouts for a node, hide fields etc - #69 by Matt_Blais
I would find it very helpful to have a âShow All Fieldsâ toggle in the fields selectors , which would TEMPORARILY (and only for the current user) show all fields⌠and which could simply be un-toggled to return to the previous selection of fields.
What if the Creator has decided that certain fields should ideally be hidden from non-Creator users? Should a non-Creator be able to show all fields?
I see this (âtoggle to temporarily show all fields in entity viewâ) as more of a Creator level function, useful to temporarily âsee whatâs thereâ in order to better understand/remember the DB structure.
But the feature as described above (auto-hiding empty fields) would seem to be useful for non-creators, no?
1 Like
The primary need here is the visual clutter of how the single empty field currently looks (as shown in the main topic here) and if there are several field this quickly fills the whole browser window. This actually is scaring away people I showed Fibery. See below the actual fields that I use:
Here are different options to solve this:
- Ddefault hiding of empty fields, and a button âShow all empty fieldsâ.
- Hiding everything of the field except the title, and making the rest appear on mouse hover.
- Hiding everything of the field except the title, make stacking more compact, and make the title half-transparent.
- Group the empty fields together at the bottom (yes get them out of the predefined place in the list) in a minimalistic style. When filling an empty field there, it will show up among the populated fields in its predefined place in the list.
This topic relates to the UX improvement of all fields, also the filled ones; making everything more compact and minimalistic.
So as an example, I would be happy with the following display of empty fields (option 3)
Just look at the difference between the first image and the second 
amazing!
2 Likes
I know this has also been suggested elsewhere, but one of the other ways of dealing with this is to make field visibility to be also formula driven. This allows for a more sophisticated approach to what to show and when.
One of the things I find amazing about QGIS (open source GIS application) is that early on a decision was made that almost all inputs and options had the ability to be set using the expressions/formulas. This allows simple input for normal cases but ability to expand functionality that the programmers could not predict. Iâm hoping that fineryâs investments in building formulas and condition logic (for sorting and filtering) could be leveraged across the entire system wherever user input is needed.
3 Likes
agree with that, zen mode like this, using a lot in reading document. Itâd be nice to have a visual focus on the main things rather than distract by all other
1 Like
Something related: When printing an entity as PDF, all fields are printed also regardless whether they are empty or not:
This would be a great solution. Also for other purposes, such as background color/higlighting/enlarging etc of a field.
