Product Suggestion: Please stop showing new View Sidebar

[ScottWorld]

Starting yesterday, Airtable rolled out a new sidebar in the left margin to display the views in our base.

This is fine, but please stop auto-opening this sidebar by default.

Every time we refresh our web browser or enter a base, this view sidebar auto-opens.

It takes up a significant amount of screen real estate, and it is a real pain to continually be closing this new sidebar. Every time we enter a base, we have to close the view sidebar again.

The vast majority of people aren’t continually switching views constantly throughout the day. For this to be ever-present and taking up a significant amount of screen real estate is not helpful.

This should stay closed by default.

p.s. The old view switcher was not difficult to find or use.

[ScottWorld]

Rachel_Penner:

Additionally, long titles/names of views get cut off and there is literally NO OPTION for me to see the entire name for certain views. Which is super frustrating, because in some instances I have very specific names for indicating what I’ve filtered/grouped/etc.

Wow, that’s a really great point. The ONLY way that you can see the full name of a view in the list of views is to hover over the name of the view with your mouse. Very frustrating.

This was not the case before, when you could always see the full names of the view in the list.

Please be sure to report this to support@airtable.com.

I have no idea why the Airtable team insists on cutting off important information throughout their entire product line. Text gets cut off everywhere in the entire product line: Calendar view, gallery view, kanban view, form view, charts, graphs, all of the linked fields in expanded views of a linked record field, column headers, page designer block, list of views, etc.

There is no area in the entire Airtable product line that ever shows the full name of “lengthier text”. This is just really bad design direction from the Airtable team.

[Miguel_Diez]

+1 The new views panel should be closed by default. The extra click for those who want it open is not symmetrical to the extra click of those that want it closed. If you need to change to a different view and need to make an extra click for that, at least your mind was already thinking about views, whereas the person that needs to close it, was not thinking about views at all and that extra action was imposed on them. Every single time…

[Markus_Wernig]

I don’t like the new sidebar view window. It cuts down on screen real estate when it’s out. Plus that moving in and out is disruptive to the visual flow of things. I don’t want to have to see the entire screen shift to the right just to pick a different view…!
The classic drop down window is much more subtle and less intrusive.
If you absolutely must introduce that sidebar, please make it an option.
Thank you!

[Britt_Myers]

Airtable what is the deal? We have been complaining for a month now - that’s way too long for an “experiment”. Revert this, fix this, deal with it please. It remains awful.

[ScottWorld]

I agree. This new sidebar truly destroys the Airtable experience. Please be sure to email support@airtable.com with your comments, because they don’t monitor these forums very closely.

[Jason]

ScottWorld:

Please be sure to email support@airtable.com with your comments, because they don’t monitor these forums very closely.

We definitely welcome feedback directed to our support team, but our our product team does monitor the feedback shared here. Feel free to continue sharing thoughts here in the community :thumbs_up:

[ScottWorld]

Jason:

but our our product team does monitor the feedback shared here. Feel free to continue sharing thoughts here in the community

Nice, this is great to know that you are watching & listening to us here! :slightly_smiling_face:

[Indresh_Kumar]

I manage a SaaS product myself. If so many of my users (or even half) clearly told me what they like and don’t like in an experiment - I would listen and act.

[ScottWorld]

Indresh_Kumar:

If so many of my users (or even half) clearly told me what they like and don’t like in an experiment - I would listen and act.

No kidding. Personally, my biggest disappointment with Airtable is that it frequently feels to me like the Airtable team has not cultivated an internal corporate culture of listening to its users or having a dialogue with its users. It often feels like a huge disconnect between “them” and “us”, and it feels very disheartening to me personally, because I often feel voiceless.

The way that I personally experience this playing out in the real world is that it frequently means poorly-chosen features, half-baked features, or buggy features. Even when we report problems in the product where things are legitimately broken (e.g. the URL preview block won’t work with 100% of Vimeo links, the Maps Block creates constant extraneous unnecessary API calls to Google Maps which costs people real money with additional Google charges, and dozens more problems), the issues very rarely get fixed. But most frequently, the lack of dialogue with its users results in half-baked features (i.e. kanban views, calendar views, and expanding linked record fields comes to mind).

The old dropdown menu for switching views was clearly superior in a dozen different ways (including the simple facts that it didn’t cut off lengthy view names like the new interface does, and it didn’t keep shifting the user interface, and it didn’t take up valuable screen real estate) — yet Airtable seems insistent on rolling out the inferior sidebar fo everyone.

At the very least, give our users the OPTION of choosing the superior dropdown menu interface (i.e. the original interface) or the inferior sidebar menu interface (i.e. the new interface). Another new user today just posted about this here:

Views Sidebar/toolbar Views

Hi All, so this might be dead simple but its killing me. We are rolling out airtable to many people within the business, however some have access/are visably able to see the “Views sidebar”, and some it is a dropdown. i mean this: [image] but some can only see this: [image] so what my question is, how can i switch between the two. I have tried the SHIFT+ CONTROL+K, but this just opens the dropdown menu. surely there is a way to toggle between the two. thanks! Rob

[Christian_Galea]

ScottWorld:

The old dropdown menu for switching views was clearly superior

Please refrain from making exaggerated statements such as the one quoted above, particularly when attempting to portray your personal opinion as fact.

I’ve had the new menu since I started using Airtable, and just today got changed to the old menu; as someone who often switches between views, having to first click to get all the views and then click the view that I want is driving me crazy…so no, the old menu is not “clearly superior”.

It boils down to this: everyone has their own preferences, and no single solution will satisfy everyone. And for something so critical in the UI, it should be ensured that everyone finds a good solution - even if they’re in the minority.

Consequently, the solution in Micrososft Outlook, as described by user Kamille_Parks above, seems to be the best of all worlds - users can choose whichever layout they want, and the choice is remembered between sessions. Simple.

Lastly, the new menu does let you collapse it if you’d like…but the old one doesn’t give you any choice whatsoever. The issue seems to be (although not sure since I never tried it) that the new menu does not remember the user’s choice; if it did, I think it would already be able to satisy a-lot of users’ requirements.