Since Bill French’s prediction 268 days ago, I opened every day my AIRTABLE Community window hoping that it would appear in flashing golden letters.
As the October 2021 Airtable news was less numerous than the previous months, I told myself that the day I hoped for was perhaps very close: something exceptional could appear in November!
Party! It finally happened!
Historical AIRTABLE’s VIEWs:
In my modest opinion, I presume that the AIRTABLE VIEW which is a major attraction of the platform must have existed from its first weeks of public life, at least long before 2019, (august 2019 when I had finally found what I was looking for without finding it : AIRTABLE ! in an article dedicated to another theme : Document As An App.)
But from where I stand, the historical VIEW seems to have been designed and built in such a way that it has always resisted to be managed, to be manipulated by any Scripting API and that it was not designed to match one day Bill FRENCH’s prediction of being offered a CUSTOM VIEW by AIRTABLE.
Interface Design borned as a new part of AIRTABLE :
As they did for the Automations, AIRTABLE did not try to underpin, underwork its VIEWs to make them customizable, nor even one day controllable by SCRIPT,
but rather proposed something additional, entirely designed in a new way.
Comparatively, from the Scripter’s point of view, AUTOMATION Scripting is neither a Scripting Block API extension nor even an extension of Custom App (scripting) but an additional building to AIRTABLE which has no link with Scripting nor Custom App, except some known similarities of specialized js language known as “airtable js SDKs”.
(if you think my comparison with AUTOMATION is script-focused, you’re right, it’s quite limiting and wouldn’t stand up to a NOcode approach of the question, but I am a Scripter passionate about js, not only in AIRTABLE, far from it,so my speech is strongly opinionated).
Interface Design sharing :
What I feel not so good experience is that while I can share or embed any VIEW
in READ-ONLY MODE with anyone, there is no reason to believe that this will ever be possible from a PUBLISHED designed INTERFACE.
As long as we stay in READ-ONLY, (without the possibility to modify, add or delete a RECORD) I find this way of publishing an Interface terribly limiting unlike what the historical VIEWs offer.
I hope that this possibility is hoped for, expected by more than one or two people,
and that it will evolve accordingly.
Regards,
olπ
