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.

[Andrew_Kolakows]

It should never be ON by default. Bad design.
Let people decide to have it on or off by default. I hate it and it’s driving me mad.

[Will_Saleen1]

Agreed. Sometimes I want it there, sometimes I don’t. I would like the option to set the preference on a base-by-base, or even table-by-table basis.

[Kamille_Parks]

I think Microsoft Outlook has a good implementation of the suggested changes to the view sidebar. In outlook, the Folders panel comes in three states: collapsed, slide out, and pinned.

In the collapsed state it takes up next to no screen space, with folder names visible/clickable

In the slide out state, the panel appears as an overlay without pushing content over

In the pinned state, the panel remains fixed in full width to the left of the screen and content is pushed over to the right. With all three states, Outlook remembers which state the user chose between sessions.

I think if Airtable should use this approach for the views panel instead of its current iteration.

[ScottWorld]

This is a fantastic approach to solving this problem!

[Davide_Cencini]

Also, it doesn’t work properly! :frowning:
CTRL+SHIFT+K opens the pane but when I should be in the search box and I input text to search between views, it creates a new record instead.
Please fix this, it worked just fine earlier.

[Decker_Moss]

I’m experiencing the same prob as many others where the Views pane defaults to and open state whenever I open an existing base. It’s incredibly annoying to have to continuously close this view. If it’s supposed to be defaulting to a closed state, it’s not working, at least not for me. I’d much prefer that it default to closed. If I want to change the view, I can easily open the pane myself.

[Michael_Rogawsk]

I agree! Most of the time I don’t need the Views panel. The new behavior of it being open by default is very irritating. Please fix this ASAP. Don’t require the views panel to be open so that I need to close it. Thank you!

[ScottWorld]

Everyone who has posted in this thread: Thank you for voicing your concerns here, and please continue to do so! :slightly_smiling_face: Additionally, please be sure to share your concerns with support@airtable.com, because it’s unknown how frequently the Airtable team checks this thread, and I know that we’d all like to see this issue resolved as quickly as possible.

[ScottWorld]

For me personally, I feel like one of the biggest problems with this new feature is that instead of the old “View” menu which was super-easy & quick & functional (because we could just switch to a new view), now we have to take 3 steps:

1. Open the sidebar (which shifts the entire database to the right) by moving your mouse all the way up to the “View” menu.
2. Choose the new view, which may be all the way down below.
3. Close the sidebar (which shifts the entire database back to the left again) by moving your mouse all the way up to the “View” menu again.

So, now it’s 3 lengthy steps, when this used to be just 1 easy step that didn’t interfere with the screen at all! It used to be just a simple drop-down menu!

[Rachel_Penner]

Just today, I noticed that the sidebar was no longer automatically opened when I switched to a new table. However, the interaction cost noted above by @ScottWorld is still a big impact.

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.