CHANGELOG: June 9, 2022 / Publish Space to Web, Pin Checkbox and Formula Fields

:earth_africa: Share Space to Web

Now you can publish the whole space to the world. Navigate to space settings, click Share and enable Share to the web option.

:rotating_light: When you share a space, everything inside it will be shared (all documents, views, whiteboards, databases with all entities).

For example, we have shared several spaces:

Note that all shared spaces are visible to all external users.

We are eager to learn how you will use Share Space to web feature and what use cases it covers for you!

Shared spaces are relatively SEO-friendly, we’ve made effort to make them discoverable by search engines.

:round_pushpin: Checkboxes and formulas in pinned fields

Now you can enable checkboxes (editable) and formulas to be visible in pinned fields section:

:butterfly: Improvements

  • We got a decent amount of negative feedback about the new panels navigation, so we decided to enable this setting again in Experimental Features. Meanwhile we will think how to make it better for remaining users.
  • Now Fibery doesn’t put Entity name into URL if it consists mostly of non-latin characters. You should no longer see URLs like this xxx.fibery.io/S3/Task/--------.-.-2.--,---,-.-161

:shrimp: Fixed Bugs

  • Parent entity opens in the right panel if open it from pinned fields
  • Reference field is absent for databases converted from Integration
  • Can’t delete comment, generated via Automation rules
  • Read-only mode isn’t auto-off for database after disabling integration
  • ‘Expand’ stops working if panels were opened and Fibery version gets updated
  • Handle websocket alive timeout error more user-friendly
3 Likes

Oh man, I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I wanted to like it so much, I love the concept. But yeah, I got used to it a bit, but the overall experience and logic wasn’t quite working for me yet. I will give it some thought as to what might be better while still gaining some of those benefits…

It would be cool to hear some feedback :slight_smile:

1 Like

regarding panels navigation, i don’t like stacking those panels minimized, it’s pointless for me and gets annoying. Not sure how often i clicked on of those minimized panels, i only click on “x” to close them :slight_smile:

I may do some more focused testing and give more in-depth feedback on “Panels” another time, but here are my immediate thoughts.

Panels is great in theory. But even after using it for a while I continued to find it a bit jarring to switch my visual focus left and right, back and forth, constantly. I also tend to try to center any info I am most interested in on my screen overall (and I have a 4k, 32" screen), so when the panel would pop-out, it would often obscure or shift some other info I had centered. This latter experience happened most significantly with Docs, anywhere that the primary content was centered, and then a pane would open, the content suddenly shifts to the left and my object of interest is now also to the right. So I think that’s problem #1 with the core mechanic, for me. The utility of side-by-side content and preserved navigation did not outweigh the constant focus shifting.

Second, I feel as though the feature ended up being “over-engineered” in the hopes to perhaps either A: let people use it exactly as they might want or B: due to being unsure exactly the right behavior in any given situation, and so giving users the option. This resulted in the addition of multiple new buttons and functions (expand/full-screen, collapsed nav history panes on left/right, close panel), and with the simultaneous addition of a Search button on basically all Views (something I’m still unsure about too) and the panel left/right options there, it just became too much I think.

Perhaps it was in part that it is trying to accomplish two things at once, as well: more simultaneous display of info and context preservation in navigation. Either one of those things might have been an improvement, but both together might just have been too big a challenge to make it all work ideally. That’s certainly a guess though.

Regarding the context preservation, there is a part of me that definitely likes the idea of it, but I think I also find it too obtrusive in the current implementation. As I’ve noted above, consistent content alignment/positioning is for me an important part of feeling comfortable, even “masterful”, in my use of a tool. The collapsed panels subtly shift content constantly as you open and collapse them, which I think just subtly wears on me as a low-level micro-adjustment I’m having to now make, all the time. I thin it makes me feel vaguely unsettled.

A possibly better (though probably simpler/less powerful) approach might for example be to adopt the Web Browser back/forward along with the press-and-hold for a “history” list/view (dropdown) to immediately jump back to any previous place. But then… that’s exactly what the browser already provides. :joy: Though I imagine many people may not know about it…

Another thought that occurs to me is that, although there is definitely exception, in my current work in particular, most often I am opening one thing from e.g. a Table, checking or doing something there, then returning to my table. Being able to reference the table can be helpful sometimes, and 100% there are times when being able to have two entities side-by-side is great. But to have that always be what happens… no, I think that’s going too far. In any case my point I guess is basically that the panel navigation is useful in certain types of work at certain times, so perhaps should be an option somehow (a mode you can switch into, e.g. a toggle somewhere to “split content panel”). But in general I don’t want/need it and it just gets in the way a bit.

So those are some scattered thoughts that I hope are helpful. If there are takeaways I think it’d be:

  • Simplify the model, UI, UX, if possible
  • Try to consider panels and context preserving navigation as separate problems
  • Prioritize the preservation of content positioning/alignment
  • Make panels optional but easily switched into (I have more thoughts/ideas here)
1 Like

Thank you for the detailed feedback! While I use panels everyday and in most cases like them, I agree that some people get used to focus on a single thing. Maybe a setting will do the trick here, but so far we are collecting more feedback to make a decision. Some people love panels (majority), some don’t (my estimate is 20-30% based on feedback).

Maybe we should educate people better to show how search + panels works nicely.

1 Like

Some feedback:

The fact that some panels open to the left and other open to the right of the current panel is very disorientating. I get that Fibery “reads” the hierarchy and opens parent entities to the left, but this is NOT imho the best UX. IMO panels should always open to the right of the current panel.

Another frequent usecase is I open a project in a panel, and I want to open several tasks in other panels. The first panel opens directly to the right of the project. However, the subsequent tasks are opened to the left of the previous task. That’s counter-intuitive. When I open a series of tasks I want to work on the first one, then the second, etc. etc. The way it’s currently setup I have to open the last task I want to work on first, than the second last etc. etc til I get to the first. In other words, when opening siblings they should open in panels to the right of the previous opened sibling.

The fact that you can’t drag and drop to reorder the panes is very unfortunate. Several times I open, for example, a task, then open the project, just to access the “sibling” tasks and use both tasks, referencing off of each other. Now, however the project is in the middle of both of them, and I have to close it be able to see both tasks at the same time. I’d like to keep both tasks and the project open.

I know I could simply close the project and reopen it again in the first task. However, all the closing of panels to get to the configuration one wants also messes up the navigation history, so that one has to back several “pages” that reopen previously closed panel that were closed just to set up the view one wanted to begin with.

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Another suggestion would be to simply allow user to “minimize” panels and open them however one wants. The overflow could then be handled by horizontal scroll so that I could keep the first and third panels “open”, while the second is “minimized”

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To add onto @maxlinworm’s comment, it would be extremely useful to pin a panel. That way I can pin the panel I want to the left side and scroll through my open panels in comparison on the right.

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This is already fixed, in the next release all panels will open on the right.

Other observations are very helpful, thank you! We will think about that cases.

1 Like

Out of curiosity, what is the appeal of being able to have mutliple tasks open if you plan on working on them sequentially?
When working on the first Task, is there something you need to view from the Tasks you plan on working on, but haven’t got round to yet?

Would it be ok to keep the project open on the left (with its list of tasks showing) and then click on the tasks of interest one at a time, each one opening in turn (on the right, and with no collapsed tasks)?

1 Like

Sometimes. Sometimes tasks have references and notes that I have to use for other tasks.

Overall though I think panel navigation is GREAT!

2 Likes

Lots of good additional feedback since my notes here, most of which I agree with. I think the point about where the panels show up gets at something I didn’t articulate in my reply earlier, but was also a pain point. Glad to hear that’s being fixed.

Do I understand correctly that the panels navigation is intended, in part, to preserve the “path” or sequence someone takes as they open successive views/entities? If so then it’s conceptually incompatible with the idea of manual reordering. If manual reordering is a possibility (which I’m not sure of), then it’s worth considering whether a more explicit, user-managed approach to panels nav, collapse, “stickiness”, etc. is warranted, and how it might work…