PowerGrid: SmartForm

Let’s discuss one of the features we are developing - a special cell type that renders values from multiple columns in one cell. The idea is to make it very easy for the end user to use it on an arbitrary dataframe. Here are some of the features we have in mind:

  • Adaptive rendering (layouts, font sizes, formats, and representations change depending on the cell size). This is the main advantage over the previously exising “form in cells” feature.
  • Integration with individual renderers (for instance, molecules should be rendered appropriately)
  • Integration with color coding
  • Support for templates (power user designs a form and shares it with the organization, and then it gets offered automatically based on the column names and types when user clicks on “add a form”)

We’ve already made good progress on it, check it out:
grid-smart-form

@nik.clare.gmail.com , @nico.pulver.novartis.com , @andrey , @tcarolan.neomorph.com - you might find it useful, we’ve been discussing similar ideas in the past

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That looks really nice!
Is that available somewhere to play with?

Would the color-coding be based on what was set up for the individual columns in advance?

Hi Nico,

It used to work but looks like I broke it very recently. Give me a day or two to fix a couple of bugs before you try it out; after that, it will be available on https://dev.datagrok.ai. This is our bleeding edge version where overnight we build and deploy the latest versions of core and plugins. You have an account there already, and we’ve just opened access to everyone in your company as well :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Andrew

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Hi Andrew

I played with it on dev today and really like it.
Some first feedback:

  1. if you set the column sizing of the table to minimal, it would be great if it would render the dots. Right now, “minimal” is rendering the columns still too wide for the dots:

  2. It does not seem to work in all cases. I tried your “sar_small” demo file and for these two columns it did not work:
    2023-08-10_11-06-19 (1)

  3. Would be great if you can create the form from the context menu, like the Summary Column (is it conceptually not actually a Summary Column anyway?)

  4. I wonder if it would not be confusing that there is this Forms entry in the context menu, which relates to the old Forms feature and now there is another one. Would it make sense to rename one of the two? Or as suggested, make this one part of the Summary Columns?

Thanks
Nico

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Another one:
Is there a chance to allow changing the columns in the form? I.e. being able to add or remove one later on again?

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Yet another one:
If I work with chemical structures, I might have most often a relatively high row height.
But in this case, the form does not collapse down to dots (only when the row height is small).
Would it be possible to have the form to collapse to dots also on the vertical axis, like in this case:
2023-08-10_12-56-54 (1)

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And one more:
It would be useful if the collapsed form tooltip does also show the column name, corresponding to the values:
image

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The tooltip does not work when the row is too big, even though dots are rendered in the cell:
2023-08-10_13-03-14 (1)

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Hi @nico.pulver.novartis.com , thanks for the great suggestions!

if you set the column sizing of the table to minimal, it would be great if it would render the dots. Right now, “minimal” is rendering the columns still too wide for the dots

You are right, this makes no sense. Changed it to the following (note that we show column names differently now in this mode):

image

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Thanks. That was the special usability improvements for integers containing only 0-9, it switches to the marker mode later than usual cell trying to fit the digit. Fixed.

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Good idea. Added it under the Summary Columns, where all sparklines are. There is some possibility for confusion with Add > Forms, where we have the HTML-baser, heavier, user-customized forms.

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Done. Click on the column header to see its properties in the context panel, just like with other sparklines.

(not yet deployed on dev).

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I think you called it SmartForm now, right?
Should be called the same here as well:

image

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You are right. Changed to “Smart form…”.

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By the way, the Smart Form feature works nicely with the new multiple column selection feature:

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